


Conflict of Interest

by NotQuiteHumanAnymore



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Prompt Fic, i hate reading/writing that sort of thing so i wouldn't force you guys to do it!, there are some anxiety attacks but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 01:51:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10629693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteHumanAnymore/pseuds/NotQuiteHumanAnymore
Summary: Tumblr prompt! @alien-angel-orsentientpotato (AKA my firstborn, Cheyenne) asked "Okay so headcanon for x-men evolution. Despite Pietro and Kurt being on separate teams they have a weird understanding of each other as they are both fidgety. Pietro because everything moves so slow and Kurt because he's not used to sitting still or being in one place for long periods of time like school demands. So through this understanding they form a weird pseudo friendship thing in which they race each other, play tag, and see what pranks they can pull on each other without getting caught." And it became this 30k behemoth.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alien-angel-orsentientpotato](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=alien-angel-orsentientpotato).



> Here it is, guys!! The snapshots fic! 9 months in the making, this was an absolute labor of love and also blood sweat and tears. I'm a little nervous to post it, but considering that what I've done for almost a year when I have writers block is go back and edit this, I hope there aren't too many errors!  
> This is mostly self indulgent, and includes a great many of the headcanons that Cheyenne and I have discussed over on tumblr.  
> I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it, folks!

I.

 

Kurt wasn't sure when it happened (probably around the same time that he and Pietro were grouped together for an in-class geography project) but Kurt started to notice Pietro.

Okay, not like that. He started to notice things _about_ Pietro. In anyone else, he likely would have let it slide, wouldn't have thought twice about the little tics he noticed. Except...

They were familiar.

Except Kurt had incredibly similar habits.

Except this was Pietro Maximoff, and from experience, Kurt knew that Pietro didn't do anything without three separate underlying motives.

And it was always a good idea to understand the enemy, right?

Right.

Habit one: Pietro always sat by the window. It wasn't just in the class that they shared, which could have made sense, but in every class that Kurt passed after that, he saw Pietro in a window seat.

Every chance that Pietro got, he was outside, or as close as he could get in the confining school building. Hence: window seats.

It was the reason he and Pietro had gotten paired up in the first place. Kurt couldn't stand being inside for hours on end, either. The nature of Kurt's powers meant that he hated to be confined to one place. They were easy for him to get out of, naturally, but it was always easier to teleport when he was surrounded by fresh air. He always felt more capable when he wasn't confined to four walls. There was a time that he could only teleport to places that he'd been, or that he could see from where he stood, and constantly being surrounded by walls had been a source of total anxiety for him for a very long time. If he'd needed to get away, back then, he couldn't have.

He was very lucky to have strengthened his powers as he'd done.

And now, windows helped every room feel more open, less like a trap that he might not be able to escape for once.

So, Kurt recognized Pietro's anxiety. The more that he thought about it, the more sense that it made. Pietro's power was super speed. It probably led to all sorts of side effects that made Pietro want to be moving more often than not. It was natural that being stuck in one place, even for the duration of a class period would therefore be tough for him.

It was an odd realization, but Kurt could relate.

Habit two: Pietro was always moving. He was never actually stationary. Kurt was infinitely grateful that he sat behind Pietro, because otherwise he would have been caught staring more than he cared to admit. It was... entrancing to watch Pietro. He would never say that to anyone, even under pain of death, but it was true. Even when he was sitting, there was a fluidity to it. And Kurt caught Pietro using his speed more than he thought the other boy even realized. The light that filtered in from the window next to them hit Pietro and bathed him in a glow that made every single fidget or restless finger tapping moment look almost ethereal.

It was cool, okay?

Habit three was the one that Kurt couldn't stand.

Pietro was always hiding it.

The moment someone so much as looked at Pietro, the fidgeting stopped. Pietro slid into an alternate version of himself, where he didn't need to move all of the time.

It was clearly some kind of defense mechanism and Kurt didn't like it.

He also didn't like that he knew to look for it.

He wasn't sure what it meant, that he'd been paying so much attention to Pietro, someone he didn't even like. Someone, in fact, that he helped to defeat on a biweekly basis.

It was conflicting, because now, whenever he saw Pietro looking anxious in a crowd and hiding it well enough that no one else knew, he wanted to help.

He was _worried_ about Pietro.

And that was probably not a good thing.

 

II.

 

Pietro never needed to know that Kurt had any idea that he wasn't some kind of masterful anxiety free, side effect-less mastermind, he decided.

Kurt could just help him out in little ways. Distracting him in the class they shared because he didn't understand a concept and Pietro sat closest to him. Picking fights with the Brotherhood out on the school field instead of in the commons area. If the others questioned him changing their methods, they didn't say anything.

Kurt didn't think they knew.

Still, there were times that he would see Pietro from across a hallway (Pietro was hard to miss) and notice the hard curve to his shoulders, or the way only one side of his mouth was pulled up enough to be considered a "smile". He'd seen Pietro truly smile, once, so he knew the difference.

None of the Brotherhood members seemed to be able to tell the difference. Or they were ignoring it.

Both options rubbed Kurt the wrong way.

This time, though, as Kurt caught sight of silver hair from the corner of his eye, Pietro wasn't even pretending to smile. His shoulders were straight, his back looked like he'd been stuck on a scarecrow's pole. His hands were in fists at his sides.

His face was completely blank. He almost looked bored, but his eyes kept moving, and Kurt realized that he was looking for a way out.

Without thinking, without even stopping to shut his locker, Kurt started pushing his way through the throng of people, towards the brotherhood and where Pietro stood, ready to bolt at the edge of the group.

Kurt had barely brushed against Pietro and wrapped his tail around his ankle by the time he started to teleport.

He went to the widest, most open place he could think of that was still on school grounds.

They landed beside the bleachers, and, to his credit, it only took Pietro about half of a second to catch up with what had just happened.

He was, understandably, not exactly happy with what Kurt had done.

"What was that for?!" he hissed, dragging Kurt under the bleachers and out of sight of the school building.

The slats of the bleachers caused an interesting lighting effect against Pietro's skin, bringing out circles underneath his eyes that Kurt hadn't noticed before.

"I- don't know-" Kurt stammered, because he kept going over his thought process in the moments leading up to kidnapping Pietro, and all he was coming up with was that he _hadn't had one._

He hadn't been thinking at all of what he'd do once he got Pietro away from the crowds and the noise that was bearing down on him. He just knew that he'd needed to get Pietro away, so that he had room to breathe. It wasn't a thought so much as a feeling, a deep-rooted need to help the only person he knew that was anything like himself. "You just looked- I mean, it seemed like you needed to get out of there." Pietro refused to look at Kurt now, and it was a relief from the unwavering glare that he'd been giving the blue mutant only seconds earlier, but only barely.

Kurt could see a light dusting of color on Pietro's cheeks, rising on the back of his neck to the tips of his ears.

He was embarrassed that he'd been caught.

Kurt couldn't help but notice, however, that he was relaxed. The hard line of his mouth had softened, and it seemed to Kurt that he was breathing more easily.

The silence that stretched between them grew steadily more and more awkward as Kurt let the time pass.

He didn't want to leave Pietro alone, to go back inside and put on that mask again, and Pietro didn't seem to expressly _want_ him to leave, but they weren't friends.

They had nothing to talk about, they barely had _this_ in common. Pietro started to tap his thumb against the pads of his fingers, going faster and faster with every circuit. It was a habit that Kurt noticed was less tied to anxiety and more to nervousness. It looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't know where to begin.

Kurt wanted to make a move before Pietro could make up his mind about any of the words to say that could potentially be used as a mechanism to drive Kurt away. Kurt wasn't certain he would do that, but it was a distinct possibility. They were on opposite sides of a war, and Kurt didn't know how to reach out and let Pietro know that he understood.

But he wanted Pietro to know that he had someone in his corner. Someone who would understand, even if it didn't necessarily mean a relationship based on trust.

They could just be each other's sounding board.

If Kurt could figure out how to breach the ever-growing silence between them.

Frantically, he tried to think of words to say that would encourage Pietro, something like what Logan would shout at the start of a training session, or something that Kitty said whenever something wasn't going the way that an X-Man had initially planned for it to.

Instead, what came out of his mouth was:

"Which one of us do you think is faster?"

Pietro blinked and turned back to Kurt, bewildered.

"You know, I never really thought about it." The grin on his face hinted that he was starting to.

 

III.

 

The two of them were hidden from view, out of sight of the X Mansion, where Kurt knew that it would be _just_ too chaotic for the professor or Jean to feel Pietro's presence and assume Kurt was being attacked. Unless the professor or Jean specifically went looking for Kurt, they would have no idea that one of the noisy teenage minds wasn't _technically_ friendly.

“So how are we doing this?” Pietro asked from where he stood a few feet away, further into the tree line. He was, by far, the most relaxed that Kurt had ever seen him. His face was “bored” but his eyes were alight with some kind of energy. (Okay, not “some kind of” Kurt could practically see the competitive energy rolling off Pietro in waves. He was literally bouncing, and every few seconds the mask would slip and a small, excited smile would slip through.)

“Well,” Kurt said, not even trying to pretend that he hadn't spent the last few days puzzling it out, “If it were just a straightforward, first one to point A and back, then we would have no way of knowing whether the race was fair or not. You could run halfway and then come back, I could teleport a few feet away and be back before you even reached point A.”

“So what you're saying is we need a mediator.” Kurt made a face.

“No offense or anything, but...”

“I don't want anyone knowing about this, either, blueberry.” Kurt felt anxiety that he didn't even know he had melt away.

“They wouldn't get it.” Kurt said, glad to see that Pietro knew what he was talking about. Plus, he was fairly certain that the only Brotherhood member he'd get away with hanging out with was Tabitha, because she'd been theirs first. Pietro raised an eyebrow at Kurt but nodded his agreement.

“Right,” Kurt continued. “So I couldn't figure out how we would know whether the other person was lying until the other day.”

“Okay?” Pietro looked slightly perturbed, Kurt realized he was grinning kind of maniacally. “What did you come up with and is it going to maim or seriously injure me?”

“No, no of course not.”

Kurt thought for a moment, before coming to a decision.

“No we should be fine. I'm saving all of the death defying stuff for later.” Pietro raised both eyebrows now to the point where they were nearly touching his hairline. Kurt waved a hand dismissively. “Ah, I'm just kidding!”

He was only kind of kidding. He figured races like this would be a good way to practice control. Pietro looked a little less ruffled, though, so he counted it as a win. Pietro stretched and laid back on the grass. Kurt knew that his repose would only last for a minute at most before he was up and moving again, but he thought that the image of Pietro stretched out in an out of the way patch of sun would likely stick in his mind forever. Pietro looked languid in a way that Kurt had never seen before, the sun shone off his hair like a halo, giving him the look of an angel who decided to grace earth with his presence out of the kindness of his heart.

Ha. As if.

Kurt felt his tail flick behind him at the sight. He was very glad that Pietro's eyes were closed, preventing him from seeing both Kurt's out of control tail as well as the way Kurt was studying him.

“So, I was thinking,”

“That seems dangerous,” Pietro drawled. Kurt ignored him and continued.

“I was thinking that to ensure that it was a fair race and all, we set up flags, and whoever gets back first with all of the flags is clearly faster.” Pietro cracked open an eye and stared at him for a moment, as if to see if Kurt were serious. After he was seemingly satisfied, he sat back up, his fingers already pulling up blades of grass.

“You know, that might actually work.”

“You sound surprised. I'm actually a natural at coming up with good ideas.” Pietro huffed a laugh at his tone and flicked a blade of grass at Kurt.

“So we get all of the flags and come back. Anything else?”

“All of the flags have to be an equal distance from each other so it's fair. We start from the same spot, too.”

“Seems simple enough.” Pietro said, flicking another couple of blades of grass in Kurt's direction.

“That's because it is.” Pietro blurred momentarily and suddenly there was an entire armful of grass clippings tangled in Kurt's hair.

“Mein Gott, Pietro!” Kurt shouted, shaking grass out of his eyes.

Pietro's eyes were very blue, Kurt noticed, brushing blades of grass from his hair as Pietro doubled over with laughter, tears welling in his eyes and making them shine. It was a very different blue than what most people associated with Kurt, lighter, like the sky, where Kurt fit in best with the dead of night.

Pietro fell to the ground, still laughing, and Kurt glared, but he was surprised to find that there was no heat behind it.

He was totally going to get Pietro back for that, though.

 

IV.

 

Kurt Wagner was many things. He was, generally, forgiving. He tried to be kind. He tried to live by the rules his adoptive parents had ingrained in him since childhood.

But one thing he couldn’t stop himself from being was curious.

And when he noticed that Pietro wasn’t with The Brotherhood at lunch (not that he was explicitly paying attention. It wasn’t like he was focused on Pietro or anything. They were- Kurt didn’t know what they were.) his curiosity got the better of him. He murmured something about food and second helpings before he stood.

He walked slowly enough that he knew none of his friends would notice that he was easily missing the cafeteria entrance and headed past the table where the Brotherhood sat, looking slightly anxious.

“Can you find him?” He heard Lance ask as he drew nearer. Apparently, then, Pietro’s absence wasn’t designed.

“No.” Wanda snarled, closing her eyes and covering her ears with her hands. “I- he’s blocking me. It’s not that I can’t find him, it’s that he doesn’t want me to.” Wanda sounded devastated, the words infused with anger as she explained.

Kurt kept his footsteps measured, leisurely. He didn’t want anyone thinking that he was eavesdropping

“He’s not thinking of- of joining up with your dad again, is he?” Fred asked, sounding very worried. “He said he knows it’s a bad idea.”

“Pietro’s actions don’t always line up with his best interests.” Lance interjected. Kurt swore that he could feel eyes burning into his skull. He picked up the pace and left the range of their conversation.

It had confirmed his suspicions, though. Pietro was missing

It wasn’t in Pietro’s nature to miss class, though, Kurt thought. And if Wanda was trying (and failing) to get through to him, that probably meant that he was close. All Kurt had to do was think about what he knew about Pietro and line that up with the knowledge that Pietro had been acting strange enough that the entire Brotherhood was worried about his well-being.

Heck, he didn’t even have to do that, he realized after another moment’s deliberation. All he had to do was think about Pietro. It was an odd side effect of his mutation, but right now, Kurt thought that it could be useful. He ducked around a corner, fully out of sight of anyone eating their lunch in peace, and backed up against the wall of the school. He still had about half of an hour before their lunch hour ended and he’d need to be in class. Surely finding Pietro wouldn’t take that long?

He closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing. Then, slowly, he let himself think about Pietro.  If given enough down time, he’d realized recently, his brain would eventually wander back to Pietro anyway. Kurt still wasn’t certain what it was that drew him back to the other mutant, but Pietro called to him all the same. And right now, Pietro was worrying him. Letting thoughts of Pietro occupy the forefront of his mind was even easier than usual.

He thought about the way Pietro looked when he was holding back a laugh, still too committed to his facade to let Kurt’s jokes get a genuine peal of laughter out of him.

He thought of the rare moments when he did get to see Pietro smile. He thought about Pietro’s eyes and the way that they sparkled in the sun, of the easy grin that would stretch across Pietro’s face whenever he ran, whenever he let his guard down _just_ enough.

He thought of the way that he felt when he was around Pietro, the way he could be himself in a way he couldn't when he was with the X-Men.

He thought of the way he’d felt, the other day, when Pietro hadn’t been willing to wait until Kurt finished packing his things into his locker and had done it for him in the blink of an eye before picking Kurt up and running them to their regular meeting place.

He’d been incredibly lucky that no one had been around to see him disappear like that, or Scott wouldn’t have let him hear the end of it.

But Kurt focused, not on that moment, but the one that came after, when Pietro slowed and gave Kurt a moment to get his bearings. He’d been holding Kurt tightly to his chest, a small, bashful smile on his face as Kurt remembered what breathing felt like.

He remembered the way he’d been able to _feel_ Pietro’s voice as he made some remark about how slowly Kurt had been moving. He focused on the feeling of Pietro’s arms wrapped around him.

His heart missed a beat at the memory, and Kurt teleported.

He surfaced in a place that he’d never seen before, a darkened room lit by a few emergency lights here and there. There was one over by another door, across what appeared to be a bridge.

He didn’t need night-vision to see that Pietro was gripping one of the beams of the bridge hard enough to bend.

Pietro hadn’t heard him teleport, and Kurt could hear his harsh, ragged breathing from across the room. In fact, it was echoing slightly, the architecture of the room causing the harsh sounds to reverberate back and crash into Kurt’s ears.

Kurt moved slowly, trying not to startle Pietro, and he realized that the bridge was less of a bridge, and more of an observation deck. There was a pane of glass directly next to the surface of the bridge that reflected the security lights faintly. He couldn’t see well enough to know what was inside of the room below, but he didn’t much care, either way. Pietro was trembling, and Kurt was close enough to see it. Pietro’s gaze flicked up to Kurt and Kurt swore that he flinched slightly. Kurt knew that Pietro hated to be seen in a state of vulnerability, but that didn’t make Kurt want to help any less. He stopped about four inches away from Pietro, close enough that Pietro would be able to lean on him if he wanted, but far enough away that Kurt wasn’t worried about crowding him. Pietro’s hand spasmed around the safety bar on the bridge again and Kurt saw that the metal _had_ bent under the force of his grip.

He’d helped to avert Pietro’s panic attacks before, but Kurt had never once seen him in the middle of one.

He had no idea what to do. He ground his teeth together to keep from talking, because talking increased the chances that he said something wrong and made things worse.

Pietro let go of the safety bar and maneuvered himself onto the floor, hiding his face between his knees. Kurt sat too, trying to let Pietro know that he would be there when Pietro needed him, and he would stay silent until then. He wasn’t sure if he had moved closer accidentally, or if Pietro had, but the moment that he settled onto the cold cement floor, Pietro leaned over and rested his forehead on Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt took that as the invitation that it was and pulled Pietro ever so slightly closer, so that Pietro was wrapped in his arms, practically in his lap.

He tried not to think about the fact that this was slightly strange. Pietro had never struck him as a touchy-feely kind of guy. And they weren’t exactly friends, but-

-But nothing, Kurt realized. This was what he’d signed up for. The day that he’d pulled Pietro out of the hallway, he’d had one thought in mind, and that was to keep Pietro happy. And hugging Pietro might be strange with their still-not-friends status hanging over Kurt’s head, but if this was what Pietro needed, then Kurt would provide. He saw Pietro as his friend, and even if Pietro didn’t feel the same way, he would comfort his friend until Pietro didn’t want him to anymore.

Kurt wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that before Pietro’s breathing became more even, and his grip on Kurt’s hoodie loosened slightly, and frankly, he didn’t care. Pietro groaned.

“Wanda is pissed.” He sighed, quietly enough that Kurt could have pretended not to hear, if not for the fact that Pietro’s breath was ghosting across his throat with every word. Pietro shifted, so that he was no longer in Kurt’s lap, but his head stayed on Kurt’s shoulder as he turned his eyes to the ceiling. Kurt kept one arm wrapped around Pietro, doing his best to keep him grounded.

“She’s worried,” Kurt protested. “She said you were blocking her, whatever that means.” Pietro huffed a laugh, and in the dim glow of the emergency lights, Kurt could see that his eyes were closed, but a raw smile hung on his features.

“Nosy.” Pietro teased. Kurt didn’t have a chance to respond before he spoke again. “We have a telepathic bond.” Pietro explained. “And Wanda doesn’t worry about me. She worries about what I’m doing. She’s certain it’s something stupid at every moment of every day.”

“Well, she’s got you there.” Kurt said, trying to alleviate some of the tension. Part of him wanted to reach out and take Pietro’s hand, to reassure him that everything would be fine, and that Wanda loved him. He wasn’t sure how Pietro would respond to that, though. The rest of Kurt wanted to take Pietro by the shoulders and shake some sense into him, but he knew that that wouldn’t go over well at all. He settled for the middle ground: attempts at humor. “You’re always an idiot. I don’t know how she puts up with having you in her head all of the time.”

“Ha ha.” Pietro said, a scant amount of humor tinging his voice. “Our bond is actually kind of broken. That’s why she’s pissed whenever I block her. We’re trying our best to fix the telepathy thing, in case that’s part of the reason her powers are so hard to control, and me blocking her may be conducive to her not knowing about the panic attacks and having to deal with them herself, but it does not help fix our bond.”

Kurt didn’t ask how their bond broke, he knew it wasn’t a topic of discussion that Pietro would appreciate in his current state.

“What is this place?” Kurt asked, wincing at how blatant the change in topic was, but Pietro didn’t seem to mind.

“Mystique had plans for the school being the new base of operations for the Brotherhood. Of course, now that she’s kind of banned from the grounds, this place is abandoned. No one else knew about it. I probably shouldn’t even know about it, but I have a lot of time on my hands. Random exploration is what I do best. Just ask Evan.” Kurt opened his mouth to ask _why would I ask Evan about you_? When he remembered that Evan and Pietro had gone to the same school before Bayville.

They had been friends.

Kurt was certain that Evan had a crush on Pietro at some point. Kurt scoffed, trying not to show that the words had affected him in any way.

“Why would I ask Evan, when I can ask you?”

“Well, I might lie, obviously. Are you saying you have not heard how dastardly and two-faced I am? I find that hard to believe.” Kurt snorted. Pietro was currently curled into his side, tracing patterns into the back of Kurt’s hoodie as he recovered from a panic attack. It had to be the evilest thing Pietro had ever done, Kurt was certain. He tried to make the sarcasm thick enough to cut with a knife when he responded.

“I can see it now! So dastardly and evil, like a killer bunny rabbit.”

“Don’t tell anyone, now, I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” Kurt promised, his heart swelling at the trace of a smile in Pietro’s voice.

 

V.

 

The first time they raced.... did not go very smoothly. They both wound up missing flags and they couldn't figure out how to properly start the race. Eventually Pietro borrowed a timer from the home economics class (“It’s not like they'll miss it!” Pietro muttered, clearly avoiding Kurt’s gaze.

“When we are done you will return it!” Kurt hissed back, but he found that he wasn’t even as irritated as he likely should have been.) and they used that to kick start the race.

They also started setting up the flags together so that it was absolutely, unquestionably fair.

To say the least, Kurt had started to learn a lot about Pietro that he never really thought about.

For starters, he owned a lot more t-shirts than Kurt had thought. For some reason, Kurt had been operating under the impression that he only owned long sleeved black shirts, because that's all he ever seemed to be wearing at school. It felt weird to see any part of his arms the day he'd shown up at the Institute, but it wasn't exactly something Kurt could comment on. It was probably just a preference thing. And Jean did say that it was cold in the school building a lot, so that made sense.

He also learned that Pietro's hair fell like that naturally, due to wind resistance and-

Okay, Kurt hadn't been listening to the logistics of it, because he was staring at Pietro's actual hair.

It was nothing weird, he was just trying to make sense of how Pietro worked.

Kurt could see Pietro from the corner of his eye as he teleported from marker to marker, always caught in the middle of a movement suspended for what felt like approximately half of a second before time caught up with Kurt and they were off again.

It was very distracting.

The way Pietro’s hair caught and reflected sunlight always seemed to catch Kurt’s eye as he stopped at a marker.

It drew Kurt’s mind from the race and more and more toward Pietro.

A voice in the back of his head told him to focus on the race, not Pietro. He knew what happened when he focused too hard on a person, but Pietro kept speeding through his thoughts, seemingly refusing to leave his mind for more than a second.

And the next time Kurt went to teleport, Pietro invaded his concentration once again. So, Kurt was startled, but not surprised when he crashed into Pietro upon surfacing from his alternate dimension. The two of them toppled to the ground, Pietro’s arms coming up to wrap around Kurt instinctively.

Their combined momentum carried the two over the side of a hill behind the institute, but eventually they rolled to a stop with a series of groans. Pietro had landed on top of Kurt and Kurt couldn’t help but laugh at the situation that they’d landed themselves in. The laughter was more embarrassed ‘oh god please don’t ask how that happened’ laughter than anything else, but it bubbled to the surface nonetheless.

Pietro pulled himself up onto his elbows and glared in mock indignation.

“You did that on purpose!” He exclaimed, his eyes still alight with the competitive energy that Kurt had come to look forward to seeing when they raced.

“No, I didn’t!” Kurt insisted, his voice catching on peals of laughter. Pietro shifted and Kurt realized that he was still caught in the frame of his arms. A second realization followed on the heels of the first: he didn’t feel trapped. His smile didn’t falter, even though his heart tripped a little at the thought. Pietro’s smile turned smug.

“You were just upset because I was winning.”

“Oh, you were not!”

“Yep.” Pietro said, popping his lips on the ‘p’. He rolled off Kurt, a languid smile fixed on his face. “You couldn’t stand that I was winning, so you decided to trip me so that neither of us won.”

“That is-” Kurt rolled his eyes, trying to think of another explanation that wasn’t the truth. He didn’t want to admit that he was just thinking about Pietro so hard that he wound up teleporting to him, and by extension of their momentum, _into_ him. Pietro would never let him live it down. Pietro had never asked how Kurt found him in the school basement, and Kurt wasn’t about to admit to it now. “That is _so_ not what happened.”

“You were jealous of my awesome speedy skills,” Kurt snorted, rolling his eyes at Pietro’s terminology, “and you know what? You’re not going to get away with it, either.”

“What?” Kurt adjusted his position so that he could see Pietro better just as Pietro blurred up into a crouched position.

“That’s right, Kurt Wagner. This means war.”

“Pietro-” Pietro stood, brushing the dirt from his pants, and somehow remaining almost regal as he pointed down at Kurt, the same smug half-grin painted on his features.

“Nope, don’t try to dissuade me, blueberry. I have made up my mind. Sometime in the near future, I will think of a way to properly defend my honor.” He reached down and offered a hand to Kurt, who almost didn’t take it. What did Pietro mean by saying ‘it meant war’? The question burned at the back of his mind, but at length he curled his fingers around Pietro’s and let Pietro pull him up.

Kurt looked up and realized that they had fallen over to the edge of the tree line. If someone really, truly wanted to, they could look through a window right now and see the two of them standing there, hand in hand. He let Pietro’s hand slip through his own and knocked their shoulders together.

“Come on, we’d better go.”

A part of Kurt had to beg the question, though. _Why_. Why couldn’t this just be easier? Why couldn’t they just be... friends? Without any of the politics? He glanced over at Pietro beside him and fought back a smile.

They were friends, and they knew it. That was more than enough.

 

VI.

 

When Pietro said “This means war” He meant it quite literally. Not literal war, of course. No, he meant that he was going to engage Kurt in a pranking war.

It started simply enough, with Pietro “finding” a way into Kurt's locker and stealing all his school books. Not that Kurt used them, but it was slightly inconvenient. Of course, Pietro didn’t keep them, instead, Kurt found each of his textbooks in in the classes that they corresponded with. Kurt’s first period teacher handed him his Econ book with a blearily confused expression.

Slipped inside of the pages of the book was a note written in Pietro’s calmingly familiar script.

_“I’ll admit, this is not my best work.”_

Kurt couldn’t quite bring himself to do anything other than smile. It was too early for rational thought, anyway.

When Kurt got to the class that they shared, Pietro handed Kurt his book with a small smile.

Kurt leaned forward in his seat so that he could whisper into Pietro’ ear without risk of his words being lost.

“Show me, if that’s not the best you can do.”

Pietro leaned back and met Kurt’s gaze, and Kurt’s breath caught in his throat. Pietro’s eyes were shining, his smile quickly transforming into a smirk.

“It’s not even close.”

Kurt fought back a grin as their professor cleared her throat with a cautionary look at the pair.

Pietro hadn’t been kidding. As of that moment, it really was on.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the two traded pranks and accidentally pulled their respective friends into their war as well. Kurt had pulled in Evan first, because Evan’s ingenuity is unparalleled.

And then had come this morning. The entire house was outraged, and demanded retribution. So, Kurt was going to show Pietro what a real prank looked like.

In retrospect, Kurt wasn’t quite sure where he'd gotten the idea, but that didn’t matter, because he was sneaking into the Brotherhood house and praying that they were all asleep.

He knew that Pietro, at least, was a heavy sleeper, if only for a short time, at Pietro’s own admission.

Okay, that and the fact that Pietro had fallen asleep on Kurt’s lap during one of their meet-ups.

Kurt tiptoed around to the bathroom that he knew all the boys used.

He would have been surprised at the pristine cleanliness he found inside of it, had he not known two things. One: Mystique and Lance were total sticklers for cleanliness. Two: Pietro was neat out of both necessity and habit. His father had instilled the idea that a messy room was synonymous to a wasted life. Kurt still wasn’t sure how Magnus had pulled that one off, but Wanda was a nitpicker for neatness as well, so he guessed it might just run in the family. And Pietro complained at length, and often, about Toad’s innate messy personality.

Because of this knowledge, the nonexistence of a mess wasn’t surprising to him.

He quickly unscrewed the cap of the shampoo bottle that he knew Pietro used.

Pietro was _very_ particular about his hair. He would either kill Kurt for this, or declare Kurt (and by extension, the X-Men) the definitive winners of their prank war.

Their prank war had been going on for far too long. It had escalated to the point that nearly everyone that they knew was involved somehow.

Kurt still hadn't found half of his wardrobe, Lance was missing an eyebrow (okay, that one had been an accident), and they still hadn't gotten Scott's car off the roof of the school.

And Kurt had woken up that morning with an incredibly elaborate undercut.

Hence the hair themed retribution.

Kurt carefully poured the tube of pink hair dye into the bottle of Pietro's shampoo and scrambled to clear away all the evidence that he had been there in the first place before teleporting away as fast as he could get away with it.

He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. He was absolutely sure that this would pull him a win.

Until, that was, Pietro walked into school the next day and Kurt felt his heart skip a beat.

Somehow, some way, he managed to make the pastel pink color that Kurt had tried to saddle him with look...

Really, _really_ hot.

Pietro caught Kurt's eye from across the hall and winked.

Kurt had never been happier that the image inducer didn't follow his expressions precisely, because otherwise the projected image of his face would have been bright red.

Somehow, Pietro had managed to take Kurt's prank and use it to win the war. Or, at least, he'd won as far as Kurt was concerned. But even Kurt would have had to admit that he was biased.

“Don’t worry,” Pietro told him later, as they sat on the grass hidden from view by the bleachers-a place that Kurt had subconsciously come to regard as “theirs.” “I talked them out of retaliation.” Kurt rolled his eyes and elbowed Pietro's shoulder.

“Thanks for that, I guess,” He scoffed.

“I can't even really understand why they're mad,” Pietro continued, still grinning. “I think it makes me look dashing.” Kurt had to agree, but that didn't mean he had to agree _aloud._

“I think it makes you look like a hipster.”

 

VII.

 

Somehow, slowly, the two of them stopped spending all their shared time racing each other. As the seasons quickly changed from fall to an icy winter, racing became ultimately too dangerous for their sport of choice.

And yet, they continued to flock to each other. They still kept it a secret though, that they were close at all, that they were _friends_.

And Kurt kept his erratic heart rate and consistently flushed face whenever Pietro smiled at him, or sat close to him, or even so much as glanced at him a secret as well. Pietro was his friend now, and Pietro never needed to know.

And then came the day that the trees could no longer hide them.

“We could try meeting further in?” Pietro suggested, but Kurt shook his head before his friend had even finished the sentence.

“You’re too easy to spot.” Kurt said, as he reached out and ran his fingers through the strands of Pietro’s hair.

It was soft to the touch, and Pietro leaned into his fingers slightly, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment.  They were curled up next to each other on the ground underneath the bleachers, very glad that this was the one snow free spot outside. Kurt could live with the cold if it meant that he got to curl up next to Pietro and pretend, for even a second, that they felt the same way about each other.

The dye still hadn’t faded correctly from Pietro’s hair, much to his occasional consternation. The pink had faded, slightly, of course, but not enough to be considered completely gone, and it gave Pietro’s hair an almost opal like iridescence. Kurt really liked it. He especially liked being the one who caused it.

He was also, Kurt realized, still running his fingers through Pietro’s hair. He dropped his hand and fiddled with the frozen grass beneath them. Pietro opened his eyes and ran his tongue across his lower lip, a movement that Kurt had to fight not to track.

Kurt pulled his arms around his chest to stop the urge to reach over and touch Pietro again, yearning to know if Pietro would lean into a touch on the cheek, the way he had when Kurt played with his hair.

Pietro’s eyes widened at the sight of Kurt curled in on himself.

“Are you cold?” He asked, zipping out of his jacket before Kurt could even have a chance to respond and point out that he had fur.

As the fabric settled around his shoulders, still warm from Pietro’s skin, though, the objection died in his throat. They lingered like that for another moment, Pietro’s arms wrapped around Kurt, with his chest radiating warmth against Kurt’s back.

Kurt could feel Pietro’s heart beating against his back, and it felt like his was beating almost as fast as Kurt’s was. Of course, that made sense, given that Pietro probably had a faster heartbeat than the average human. Or mutant.

Kurt wasn’t more than a little chilly at most, but since it had been offered freely, Kurt settled more deeply into Pietro’s embrace.

When they parted ways later in the day, Kurt reluctantly attempted to return the jacket. He caught Pietro’s arm as he turned to speed back to the Brotherhood House. But, as Kurt went to take off the jacket, Pietro danced away.

“Take it. I can’t have you catching a cold on me, now.”

“What about you?”

“I run too fast for the cold to catch up to me, silly.” Pietro teased. “Besides, that color looks better on you than me.” Before Kurt’s blush even finished forming on his face, Pietro was gone. Kurt buried his face in the fabric of the jacket, a grin overtaking his face and his heart feeling far too full for his chest to hold.

Pietro didn’t ask for the jacket back, and Kurt kept “forgetting” to return it to him, as well. He couldn’t wear it out of the house unless he was meeting Pietro. At first he’d avoided wearing it when he met with Pietro, because, on the off chance that Pietro might ask for him to give it back he wouldn’t be able to refuse, but eventually he decided that if Pietro wanted it back, then he would have asked Kurt for it already.

But Pietro didn’t ask him to return it, and Kurt didn’t offer. And Kurt liked wearing it. He liked how it kept him that much warmer, how it still smelled faintly of Pietro's skin. He wore it a lot when he was tucked away doing schoolwork, or when he needed some kind of comfort after a long day. He knew it was a little weird, and that he should probably just give it back, but -

It just made him feel like Pietro was there with him.

Kurt woke one morning to a tap on his window. He tried his best to ignore it because the sun wasn’t even up yet and it was a Saturday and it was probably a bird making the noise, anyway. The knocking came again. An insistent pattern that a bird would not be capable of creating in such a precise rhythm.

Kurt rolled out of bed and shuffled to the window, fully intending to go total gargoyle on whoever had the gall to wake him up at such an ungodly hour. But when he pulled the curtains wide, he came face to face, not with a bird or a squirrel of some kind, but with his favorite speedster clinging to his windowsill.

His irritation didn’t melt away completely, but it grew less harsh in its intensity and fonder instead. And then his sleepy mind caught up to him and he remembered where they were. He leapt forward and undid the latch on the window, pulling it open wide enough for Pietro to climb inside. He looked far too awake for this to end with Kurt going back to sleep, Kurt realized, and almost wished he’d stayed in bed.

Almost. The part of him that was still longing for sleep was distinctly overshadowed by Pietro’s grin.

“Why are you here at-” Kurt blinked at the clock, trying to get the numbers to make sense. “Four oh-seven in the morning?” He groaned, flopping back down onto his bed. He buried his head beneath the pillow. “Come back when the sun is up.” He grumbled. The pillow flew off his head and he came face to face with Pietro again.  
“I can’t come back when the sun is up. I’ll be attacked by Summers or someone else trying to protect your honor,” Kurt’s cheeks colored a little at the implication, even as Pietro tried to backtrack. “Because they think that I’ll corrupt you, or bring you over to the dark side, or whatever it is that they think I’ll do.”  Pietro pouted and Kurt tried to ignore the feelings that that expression imposed on him. He failed.

“What did you have planned?” Kurt sighed, but when Pietro’s face lit up in his characteristic mix of triumph and delight, all remaining reluctance melted away.

“We are going to spend the day somewhere that we don’t have to worry about staying hidden.” Kurt’s heart skipped a beat and sped up more than he would have liked to admit. Pietro hated hiding as much as he did. Maybe, if they worked together, they could convince their friends that there was no danger in their friendship.

“But,” Pietro continued, “I have to make sure I get you back here before anyone gets suspicious.” Kurt made a face and Pietro laughed. “Don’t worry, Cinderella, it just means we have to move quickly.”

“I’m too tired to teleport accurately.” Kurt moaned, wishing it weren’t true.

“Get on my back.” Pietro stated simply.

“What-?” Kurt asked, certain that he’d misheard.

“Super speed piggy back ride, dude. Clearly the fastest way to get there.” Kurt snorted.

“Whatever you say, speedy,” He said, reaching for his image inducer. Kurt strapped on his image inducer and did as Pietro asked, placing his hands upon Pietro’s shoulders for balance as Pietro hooked his hands underneath Kurt’s knees. Pietro’s shoulders were firm beneath his hands, much stronger than they looked, and Kurt leaned forward, curling his arms around the front of Pietro’s chest.

“Ready?” Pietro asked, and Kurt settled, leaning his chin on Pietro’s shoulder.

“Hmm.” He agreed. “Back by noon?”

“Cross my heart.”

They were not back by noon, but Kurt couldn’t bring himself to mind.

The second that Pietro started moving, Kurt was entranced. The world around them slowed, then stopped. Kurt saw a starling flying above them pause mid-flight, as if contemplating turning around. And then everything blurred and became streaks of color, dotted with images of the frozen landscape. Kurt might be faster, he realized, but Pietro had the better view.

He returned to consciousness more quickly, the longer that Pietro ran, and it couldn’t have been for more than five minutes, but Kurt was entranced by what his mind was able to pick up nonetheless.

Pietro stopped, blowing past signs and still-closed shops to skid to a halt at the edge of a boardwalk.

The moment that it seemed like he was truly done moving, Pietro crouched, and Kurt, reluctantly, untangled himself from the grip he’d been clutching Pietro half to death in.

Pietro rubbed the back of his neck and grinned over at Kurt sheepishly.

“So, I severely underestimated how fast we’d get here.” He began. “I thought, _oh, it’ll take forever to get down to the coast_. But um, apparently not.” He gestured to how closed everything still was. Kurt didn’t even spare a moment being irritated that Pietro had woken him up early for apparently no reason. He was too busy basking in the fact that he and Pietro weren’t ducking for cover beneath every tree and shadow to avoid being seen by anybody that they knew.

Pietro’s eyes were shining with excitement, and Kurt didn’t have to be an empath or a telepath to know that he was happier than he had been in ages.

Even when they were together back in Bayville, he seemed to be holding back, in case someone else saw them together. He always had to keep up the “aloof tough guy” act, even when he didn’t.

And here, Kurt was happy to see, he’d dropped it entirely.

Kurt didn’t know how to say that he’d do just about anything to keep that look on Pietro’s face. Instead, he grinned at Pietro in return.

“More time for us.” He said, and something, quick and indecipherable, flashed through Pietro’s eyes. Kurt didn’t bother taking it back. Besides, it was gone almost instantly, replaced by the mischievous glint that he’d become so accustomed to.

“You must be really sleep deprived.” Pietro began. Kurt narrowed his eyes, half sure that Pietro was about to accuse him of staying up daydreaming about him, which wouldn’t, strictly speaking, be false, but Kurt didn’t have to admit that to anyone.

Pietro was close enough now that Kurt could tell that he was taller than Kurt. By less than an inch or two, sure, but Kurt still had to look up slightly to meet those enigmatic eyes.

His heart fluttered, and Kurt was sure that Pietro knew that while he might have been tired three seconds ago, he was wide awake now.

Pietro looked so focused, and dimly, Kurt realized that this meant that Pietro had a plan, and was about to execute it, but he was still stunned by the fact that he could once again feel the heat emanating from Pietro’s body.

“Ye-es?” He admitted, when he realized that Pietro was still waiting for an answer. He was trying to keep himself from reacting when Pietro stepped closer.

“You know, I can think of a surefire way to wake you up.”

“How?” Kurt asked slowly, drawing the word out. He was suddenly very on guard, ready for anything, his heart racing slightly at the implication behind Pietro’s words, as well as his proximity.

Before Kurt could even quite process what was happening, Pietro ducked, and Kurt had known, superficially that he was stronger than he looked, because he’d carried Kurt on his back over a large distance. And because he’d gotten many a chance to admire Pietro’s arms when Pietro wasn’t wearing those irredeemably ugly long sleeved shirts (okay, the shirts weren’t that bad, but Kurt was biased heavily in favor of how much he liked Pietro’s arms). But knowing was much different than experiencing Pietro pick him up, bridal style.

And while Kurt was still reeling from the slight disorientation that this sudden change had brought, Pietro ran them both off the boardwalk and into the waves crashing steadily at the edge of the beach.

It was spring, but only barely, so the water was like ice when it hit Kurt and Pietro.

Pietro’s lips were already halfway to blue when Kurt got his feet back under him and surfaced, gasping in an attempt to replace the air that had turned to ice in his lungs.

Somehow, despite the fact that he was visibly shivering and they were both completely soaked, Pietro was grinning again. Kurt pushed his hair from his eyes with his dry arm, maneuvering it around the grip Pietro still had on it, as he had apparently had enough presence of mind to hold it above the waves to keep Kurt’s image inducer intact.

“You _ass_.” Kurt gasped, and Pietro chattered out a laugh.

“You awake yet?” He asked, pulling Kurt closer, using the grip he still had on his arm as leverage.

The water had been cold to begin with, but there was a spring chill in the air that made Kurt huddle closer still, to Pietro’s warmth.

“If I get sick,” he said, incapable of keeping the smile from his voice as he mumbled the words into the damp fabric of Pietro’s t-shirt, “you will never hear the end of it.” Pietro curled around Kurt, and Kurt felt Pietro’s mouth bend into a smile against his temple. “How are you still so warm?”

“I told you, I move too fast for the cold to keep up with me.” Kurt turned his face to meet his eyes, so that Pietro could get the full force of his disbelieving stare. Pietro rolled his eyes, but the gesture lost some of its effect given the fact that they were still curled together, and he was still smiling. “And I might have a consistent body temperature of 105 degrees.”

“That sounds more like it.”

Silence descended on the pair, interrupted only by the crashing of the waves against their legs and the beach. Pietro shifted, his nose bumping Kurt’s and Kurt’s heart started to race again. Pietro’s eyes were so beautiful up close, that Kurt wasn’t surprised at all to find that he would willingly get lost in them, if given half of a chance to.

“Your lips are blue.” Kurt pointed out, as if that were a conversation topic that really needed to be discussed. Said lips twitched, Kurt could almost feel Pietro’s smile against his own.

“Yours aren’t.” Pietro replied, and Kurt shook his wrist, where the image inducer hung heavy.

“Hologram. My lips are, technically always blue.” Kurt tried to keep his voice from shaking, but he had no idea if he succeeded or not. Pietro’s fingers traced the outline of the band against his wrist, dancing around the button that would turn off the projection.

“Can I?”

Kurt should say no. He should tell Pietro that if anyone saw, that it would spell danger for both of them, but he was drunk on how close Pietro was to him, on the feeling of Pietro’s arm around him, on the feeling of Pietro’s breaths mingling with his own in the limited space between them-

“Yeah.”

He felt the electrical static of the hologram leave him, and he knew that they couldn’t stand like this for long, Kurt would have to put his foot down at some point, and tell Pietro to turn it back on, but Pietro seemed to relax against him still more as the image of who Kurt sometimes wished he were disappeared.

And then Pietro shifted again, and this time Kurt could feel the smile that matched his own. Their lips met, and the rest of the world melted away. There was no cold water surging around their legs. Pietro’s hand moved away from the image inducer, curling around Kurt’s fingers.

Kurt barely had a moment to think _is this happening_? Before a loud crash came from the boardwalk, and Pietro tore himself away. Kurt felt the hologram rush back around him, protecting him from view from-

From the shop owner, whose security gate had just gone crashing up at the boardwalk, too far away to even see them properly.

Pietro and Kurt turned back to each other, wide eyed, and then, simultaneously they started to laugh.

They didn’t talk about it. Pietro didn’t bring it up, and Kurt still wasn’t completely sure that it had happened, it had been so quick, but there would be time for that later.

For now, they had the rest of the day ahead of them.

 

VIII.

 

Kurt did get sick, and he could tell that Pietro felt bad about it.

Mainly because Pietro was currently stowed away in his bedroom, using his excellent telepathy-blocking techniques to ensure that neither the Professor nor Jean figured out he was upstairs.

Kurt was having a bit harder of a time at it.

He had no experience blocking telepaths, so all he could do was try and think about pretty much anything except for the fact that Pietro had brought him soup and was now doing homework at his desk. This would be so much easier, he thought, if they just told people that they were friends.

But then, there was no guarantee that their friends would understand, and Kurt knew that Evan, in particular, wouldn’t have a very good time adjusting to the fact that Pietro was a fixed part of Kurt’s life.

Kurt’s heart skipped a beat and his cheeks heated slightly at the thought.

And he blamed his wandering mind for Jean asking the question that he overheard next. Or maybe it was Pietro’s proximity influencing her, but he walked into the kitchen, intending to get another glass of tea, and almost turned on his tail and walked back out.

“What was Pietro like, at the other school?”

“He didn’t disappear half this much, I can tell you that.” Evan snorted. Kurt pretended not to care at all, but hey, he was curious. He dug through the cupboard to find his tea slowly, trying not to make too much noise. “Actually, he was a lot different. He was always around the spotlight, and you could tell where he was because of who he was with. And he used to date around a bit.” Kurt felt his stomach drop. “But like, most of it was blind dating? Kind of? Okay,” Evan shifted, and Kurt started boiling the water, trying to dispel the churning in his stomach. “So we were on the same team, and it was clear he didn’t like dating, but we had the same friends, and they were the kinds of people who would throw girls numbers around like candy. It was a weird peer pressure thing. They finally stepped off me when I told them they could shove the phone numbers up their- noses. Hey, Mr. Logan.” Logan grunted, continuing down the hallway.

“Careful who you’re talking about short stack.” Logan called over his shoulder. Evan stayed quiet for a moment before continuing.

“Pietro once told me that he thought it was pretty cool that I didn’t do what they wanted me to do. He said he wouldn’t stop doing it, though, because he was used to doing what people expected him to. I dunno, he’s full of shit, anyway. We all know that.” Kurt pulled the tea bag out of his mug and tossed in the trash, intending to disappear as quickly as possible. “How are you feeling, Kurt?” Evan asked, before he could make his escape. Evan sounded genuinely concerned. Of course he would. His problem wasn’t with Kurt, and he didn’t know about his and Pietro’s friendship. Kurt knew he had to look like hell, and Evan was just worried about a friend.

“I’ve been better.” Kurt admitted, turning a tired smile to Evan and Jean, where they sat, eating out of a tub of ice cream.

“Hopefully it passes soon.” Evan said, clearly trying to be encouraging.

“Yeah, hopefully.” He said, fleeing as soon as the words left his mouth. He didn’t trust himself to teleport, but he made his way back upstairs on shaky legs.

The mug left his hands almost as soon as he walked back into the room, Pietro guiding him back to the pile of blankets formerly known as his bed. Pietro set the mug on the nightstand beside Kurt’s bed and wrapped him in layers of blankets, clearly hoping to get Kurt’s fever to go away by sheer force of blanket-power. The thought pulled another smile to his lips and he breathed a tired ‘thank you’ at Pietro as the other boy sat beside him.

“Any better?”

“Well, I didn’t fall down this time.” Evan’s words didn’t matter. They didn’t change how Kurt felt about Pietro. And clearly, Pietro had changed. _He’s full of shit_. Evan’s voice echoed in his ears. “Hey, Pietro?”

“Hmm?”

“You’ve dated before, right?”

“Are you about to ask me for dating advice?” Pietro snickered. “Because trust me, I am not the right person to ask.” Kurt rolled his eyes.

“No, just- Something Evan said about the team you guys were on.” Pietro made a face and Kurt hid a giggle behind a sneezing fit.

“Yeah, those guys were, by and large, pretty much assholes. And this is coming from me. I don’t know. None of those relationships meant anything to me. None of those girls were my type, and, really, the only halfway decent romantic relationship I’ve had was the one with Lance, and that was just because we’re friends. There was no real romance.” Pietro’s voice sounded nonchalant, but his spine was ramrod straight, and he wasn’t meeting Kurt’s eyes. Kurt could tell what it meant, to reveal this to Kurt. He was giving him two pieces of information, and letting Kurt respond how he would.

“You dated Lance?” He asked quietly. Pietro shrugged. “Well no wonder none of your relationships last. You have horrible taste.” Kurt’s words startled a laugh from Pietro.

“Hey, he’s dating Kitty, I’d be careful what I said, if I were you.” Pietro said, teasingly. And just like that, the tension was gone.

“I love Kitty, she’s my dearest friend.” Kurt shook his head, “But this lapse in judgement is baffling. I mean, Lance has a _mullet_.” Pietro hid his face in the blankets on Kurt’s shoulder, muffling another laugh.

“Hey,” Pietro protested, once he’d regained enough breath to speak. “It could be worse. He could have a bowl cut, like Remy.” Kurt nodded sagely.

“He could have pink hair, too. That would be terrible.”

“Oh, you’re so lucky you’re sick.”

 

IX.

 

Kurt tried to ignore Pietro as best he could during the battle, but every now and again the other boy caught his eye. He was head to head against Rogue, and Kurt couldn't help but be worried about his friend. (Both of his friends! He corrected himself.)

He used Toad as a slimy launch pad and caught a low hanging branch. He laughed and teleported higher as he listened to the other mutant sputter indignantly. Pietro caught his eye again, and held it, somehow still managing to evade Rogue’s expert fists. Quickly, so quickly that Kurt was half sure that he imagined it, Pietro winked at him. He turned back to Rogue, took half of a second to trip her and ran off.  
Rogue shot back to her feet and stumbled, wincing slightly.  
She had claimed that she was well enough to come along, but she'd gotten on the wrong side of a couple of the more traditional girls at school and had wound up having a series of "accidents" that left her with a sprained ankle, a strained shoulder, and more than a few bruises.  
"I've got him!" Kurt shouted, flipping past an irritated looking Rogue. The irritation morphed to sheepish gratitude as Kurt flashed her a thumbs up and teleported after Pietro. He hoped that she would take it easy and not further injure herself (he'd been one of the few people who thought that she ought to stay behind tonight, but the professor had mentioned that the mutant they were trying to recruit had a skill set that was dangerous enough that he'd only listen to someone whose powers were similarly dangerous to his own. What the professor wants, the professor gets.)  
And then the brotherhood had shown up.  
That didn't surprise anyone, of course, but it was a little inconvenient for the already injured Rogue, and the rest of the team, who really just wanted to talk to the mutant and go home.  
Kurt thought that he may have been the only one who was excited when they showed up, the sight of silver hair in his peripheral vision making his heart pick up speed.  
He felt a little bad about his duplicity as he teleported after Pietro, but it wasn't enough to stop him.

It was strangely reminiscent of the races that they had, only instead of beating each other to a specified finish line, they kept going until the sounds of battle were long behind them.  
Pietro stopped and turned, catching Kurt as he teleported to a spot directly in front of Pietro, his momentum carrying him right into Pietro's arms.  
There was a blazing grin on Pietro's face and Kurt couldn't help but respond with a smile of his own.

A shadow passed over Pietro's face, leaving a furrow between his eyebrows as he took a step away from Kurt.  
Hurt and worry flashed through Kurt, cutting him like a knife and leaving a nervous hole in the wake of his happiness.  
"Pietro?" He asked, trying to keep his voice upbeat, trying to channel the happiness he'd had unlimited access to only moments before.  
"How long do you think we can keep this up?" Pietro asked, his voice quieter than Kurt had ever heard it.  
"What do you mean?" Pietro gestured to the empty air between them and then the room around them as a whole.  
"Hiding it. Us." Pietro said, and then stiffened like Ororo had electrocuted him. "Being friends. It’s going to have to stop eventually, right?" He added in a rush. Kurt reeled, shock and hurt cresting over him in waves. The words felt like a slap in the face.  
"Why do we have to hide it?" Pietro wouldn't look at him. He started tapping his fingers together, starting at a speed so fast that Kurt couldn't even keep up with it.  
"You said it yourself, they wouldn't understand." Kurt shut his eyes, as if he could make all of this stop, make it go away. The words were his, that much was true, but-  
"That was before." Before they got along. Before they were friends. Before Kurt had started feeling things for Pietro that he could barely admit to himself. He wrapped his arms around his torso, like the extra pressure would stop his heart from hurting as he replayed Pietro's words. "Why are you so anxious to hide us being friends? I mean, Lance and Kitty are _dating_ and everyone got past that!"  
"That's different-"  
"How?" Pietro winced at the bitterness in Kurt's tone. He couldn't bring himself to care, though, because he knew exactly how it was different. "Is it because you're ashamed to be seen with me? Is that what this is about? You trying to protect your precious reputation?" Kurt was being unfair. He knew Pietro didn't think that way, he had to know it after all the time that they'd spent together over the past few months.  
But he was still afraid that it was true.  
"Kurt, no! Of course not!" Kurt whipped his gaze back to Pietro's.  
"Then what is it?" He snarled, letting his fangs show more prominently than he'd done in years. Pietro didn't answer. He didn't even open his mouth to say anything. He just kept looking at Kurt with a pained expression.  
"Never mind." Kurt spat. "I get it." He turned away again so that Pietro couldn't see the hurt brimming in his eyes.  
"No, Kurt, wait-" Kurt paused, waiting for whatever Pietro thought he could say to make this better. "I didn't mean it like that."  
"No, you made it pretty clear." Kurt was proud that his voice didn't waver. "Don't worry, you don't have to hide anything anymore." The words tasted like poison in his mouth, and he fought back the feeling of his heart splintering as he took a step away.  
"Kurt," Pietro said again, and something in his voice almost made Kurt turn around again.  
But he knew that if he turned, he would be admitting that he cared far more about Pietro than Pietro did about him.

“No, you were right. It had to end eventually, right?” He spat over his shoulder.  
He let his racing mind teleport him away, and he couldn't even be mad when he surfaced under the bleachers at Bayville High. He couldn't even make himself feel proud that he'd managed to teleport that distance without collapsing or coming apart.  
He sat down on the damp grass and let the feelings bubble to the surface at last.

 

X.

 

Kurt generally tried to refrain from using his abilities at school (avoiding the Wrath of Scott made it just barely worth it to get to school on time without them) but after their fight, he did everything he could to avoid the hallways, the cafeteria, anywhere Pietro might try to talk to him.

Assuming Pietro could stand to be seen around him in public long enough _to_ talk to him.

Kurt didn’t assume much of anything regarding Pietro, anymore. Pietro was the one who wanted to keep their friendship a secret to protect whatever image he thought he had going. He wouldn’t approach Kurt, anyway. What Kurt was really doing was avoiding any place that he might _see_ Pietro. Any place he could be tempted to reconcile. Any place he could see that Pietro was doing just fine without him. He knew that he cared about their friendship more than Pietro did, the other boy had been pretty damn clear about that.

He didn’t go to their shared class the first day. The second day he sat in the perpetually empty desk below the air vent, and even with his fur he left the class feeling like he had icicles hanging from his fingertips. Part of him wished that he’d brought a jacket, but he knew that the only one that he wanted to wear was Pietro’s, and he needed to return that. Or burn it, preferably.

Day three, Pietro didn’t try to speak to him. Kurt wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. There were a few moments where Pietro half turned, as if to say something to him, before he caught himself and faced the front of the classroom again. Kurt wanted to curse himself for the way his heart would skip a beat whenever he saw it happen.

There were other moments, too, where they turned to each other, ready to make a joke, before they seemed to realize, simultaneously, that that wasn’t okay anymore. They weren’t okay anymore.

It didn’t stop Kurt’s heart from breaking every time he saw Pietro’s face fall because he didn’t respond to a joke. Kurt knew that Pietro wanted to be friends, still, and everything in him longed to reach out again, to grab onto Pietro and never let go again, but he didn’t want to wonder, every second that they were together, if they were hiding being friends because Pietro didn’t want to bother sticking up for him, or because he really was ashamed to be seen with Kurt.

Kurt stayed strong, because he knew giving in to being friends with Pietro again would mean that he got hurt much worse than he was hurting now, even if that seemed impossible.

So, he pretended to be normal around everyone else.

Especially Pietro.

If Pietro wanted him, wanted their entire friendship, to be a secret, to be so secret that it was like it didn’t even exist, then Kurt would be more than happy to oblige.

He tried to stop helping when he saw Pietro being nervous, too, but that was harder. He couldn’t stand to see _anyone_ in pain, let alone someone he still cared about.

He tried to tell himself that calming Pietro down wasn’t his job, that he shouldn’t want to do it, but that held less water than a colander. It hadn’t been his job to begin with. It still wasn’t a job. Despite everything that Pietro had said to him, it was about Kurt being able to help his friend. But that still wasn’t right.

Pietro didn’t want his help. He’d never wanted his help. From the beginning, he’d just wanted Kurt to mind his own business, and Kurt hadn’t been able to.

His control broke when he ran into Pietro huddled in on himself, a few feet away from the Brotherhood, who _finally_ seemed to be noticing that something was wrong.

Pietro seemed to be holding himself in place by sheer force of will, blurring every other second like he was having to force himself not to run away. Without meaning to, Kurt met Pietro’s eyes.

Pietro’s eyes looked desperate, pleading with Kurt to- something.

Barely a week ago Kurt would have known what Pietro’s gaze was trying to convey, but he didn’t want to unlock that part of his brain.

But maybe taking a guess wouldn’t hurt?

Barely sparing a thought for the Brotherhood, or for the increasingly confused Kitty, Kurt marched forward and took Pietro’s hand.

Pietro held on like if he let go, he’d fall apart.

Kurt took a guess, teleporting them out to the football field. He steered them away from their well-hidden spot beneath the bleachers, walking over to the shade of the announcer’s booth instead, with Pietro trailing beside him, hunched in on himself slightly. Before Kurt even got them to the booth and the possible cover it would give them, Pietro dug in his heels and pulled Kurt back to him.

Startled, Kurt fell back into Pietro’s embrace, and Pietro wrapped his arms around Kurt’s waist, burying his face in the crook of his neck. Kurt felt his traitor of a tail wrap around Pietro’s waist in return, but he didn’t dare move otherwise. He didn’t let himself move, because if he did, he’d wind up clutching Pietro as tightly as the speedster was holding him, and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to let go.

Kurt waited. He allowed himself to sink into Pietro’s embrace. He could feel his heart pounding, but he couldn’t make it stop. Even after all the pain liking, and even loving Pietro had caused, he couldn’t make the feelings stop.

He kept waiting. He felt Pietro’s breathing slow to match his own, and started to pull away.

“Don’t!” Pietro’s arms drew him even closer. “Please, don’t leave me.” Kurt wondered how much of his pride Pietro had to swallow to say those words to Kurt of all people. “I’ll do anything you want, just please, don’t leave me now.” A week ago, Kurt wouldn’t have dreamt of leaving to begin with. A week ago, he wouldn’t have been surprised by Pietro asking for him to stay during a panic attack.

A week ago, they were friends.

“I don’t know why you stopped to help me,” Pietro continued, lifting his head to look at Kurt directly. Kurt fought down all his emotions, refusing to give Pietro the satisfaction of any kind of hurt crossing his features. “I don’t deserve it, and I don’t understand-”

“Just because we’re not friends anymore,” Kurt cut him off, knowing he shouldn’t say it, but hoping beyond hope that Pietro would feel the same way, “doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about you.” Pietro softened at his words. His arms loosened their death grip, one of his hands falling back down to take Kurt’s again, the lines on his forehead smoothed away ever so slightly.  
“Kurt,” Pietro started, and the feeling of his name brushing across his own skin, the realization that Pietro had spoken so softly that no one should have been able to hear, not even Kurt, and that he _had_ heard reminded Kurt of just how close they were. Pietro’s hand was still tightly closed around his, their fingers joined securely enough that Kurt couldn’t ever imagine breaking that grip. Pietro’s face was turned to Kurt’s, and he realized that it would be the easiest thing in the world to just kiss Pietro in this stolen moment.

And, he realized, that even by helping Pietro through this moment, by doing this one simple thing (it wasn’t at all simple, he knew. Nothing with Pietro was ever anything but irredeemably complicated) he’d put himself at an even greater risk than he could have imagined, because Pietro might just kiss him back.

The thought froze him down to his core.

Even if Pietro did kiss him back, there would be no guarantee that he meant anything by it. He’d just admitted to being willing to do anything to keep Kurt with him right now.

And the fact that Kurt had entertained the thought of taking advantage of that because he couldn’t stop the way his heart raced around Pietro, or the way that one of Pietro’s smiles made his entire world brighter, because he couldn’t stop having feelings for Pietro, made him feel sick.

No wonder Pietro didn’t want to be friends with him.

Something on his face must have conveyed this thought to Pietro, because his grip tightened on Kurt’s hand.

“Kurt, please, I know I messed up, I _really_ messed up, but I don’t want to stop being your friend-”

“I’m going to interrupt you, before you say something you’re going to regret later. You’re not thinking straight, and I want to remind you that you have other friends-real friends-who care about you and probably think that I just kidnapped you.”

“Kurt-”

“No! I can’t- I don’t want you to start being my friend again and regret it the second you feel better, because I don’t think I’d be able to handle that, Pietro.”

Kurt untangled his fingers from Pietro’s, who looked like he’d been frozen to the spot.

He took a heart-wrenching step away.

“So I’m going to go get someone else, okay?”

“Kurt, no, I-” Pietro began, stepping into the space Kurt had created between them, but Kurt was already gone.

The hallway was empty, save the Brotherhood, Scott, and Kitty, who all seemed to be arguing about who had kidnapped who, and who needed to be killed for what, probably. Kurt walked past Wanda, trying to keep his tone as even and icy as possible.

“Your brother is on the football field. I recommend you collect him as soon as possible.”

He didn’t stop walking, even when Scott and Kitty reached for him. He could feel himself starting to fray at the edges. He was going to break down if anyone spoke to him. He’d broken ties with Pietro.

Pietro had no reason to feel guilty and try to hunt him down again.

It was really, truly over, and Kurt felt like it might be enough to kill him.

He didn’t look back.

 

XI.

 

Kitty didn’t bother knocking when she came to Kurt’s room later that day. She just phased through Kurt’s door and sat next to the pile of blankets that Kurt was buried under. It was nice under there. There was no light, no one judging him, and the only reminder that Pietro Maximoff even existed was the jacket that Kurt wasn’t planning on taking off until his chest stopped feeling like it was caving in on itself. The blanket pile was his new home. He was affectionately dubbing it “Blanket Mountain” and he would reside there until the end of days.

“Disney Marathon?” Kitty asked, not bothering to ask if he was okay, or if there was enough room in Blanket Mountain for a second resident. “I’ll let you pick the first movie?”

He knew it was a trap. He knew she was going to interrogate him the second she got a chance, but he needed to pretend, even for just the length of a Disney movie, that he was okay. He poked his head out from beneath Blanket Mountain and squinted at Kitty suspiciously.

“You never let me pick the first movie.” He accused. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?” Kitty pointed at herself, doing her best impression of a wide-eyed deer before rolling her eyes with a sigh.

“Okay, you can pick the movie, but it has to be Mulan.” She amended, putting her hands up in the “I surrender” position before getting up and plugging in her laptop before Kurt even answered. He couldn’t argue with the movie choice, anyway. It was a spectacular movie, and the music never failed to put him in a better mood.

“Okay.” He conceded.

To Kitty’s credit, she did wait until the end of the movie to begin her interrogation.

“So,” She began, as the end credits rolled across the screen, replacing the image of Mulan’s smiling face, “That thing with Pietro earlier. That was weird, right?” Kurt let his eyes fall shut momentarily, knowing that Kitty wouldn’t pick up on the gesture.

“He was having a panic attack; anyone could see that. Just because he’s our enemy doesn’t mean I can’t be compassionate, right?” He wished he could believe the words coming out of his own mouth, but they sounded flat, even to him, and the moment he said enemy, he could feel tears welling up in his eyes. Kitty put a hand on his shoulder, and Kurt focused on watching the names still scrolling across the screen in front of them.

“Kurt, I’ve never seen you that upset, did something happen? Did he hurt you?”

 _Yes_ , Kurt wanted to say. _Yes, he hurt me_. _He made me think that I was worth something, he made me feel like I was normal. He showed me an entirely different side to life, to being a mutant. He made me fall in love with him, and then he decided I wasn’t good enough for him._

“I’m fine, really.” He chirped instead, turning a too-wide grin on Kitty.

“Kurt, you’re my friend, I want to help you, here.”

Kitty looked at him, and her eyes were so earnest that Kurt had no doubt in his mind that she meant it. She wouldn't judge him, but he couldn't make the words leave his mouth, because a part of him was worried that Pietro would be right about him, and bringing it up would make Kitty leave him, too.

“You might think this is totally out of left field or something, but I know that you and Pietro have been spending a lot of time together. Lance _is_ still his best friend, you know. And as his girlfriend he would be out of his mind not to tell me, like, everything.” Kurt looked at her miserably. So, they knew. Obviously, they would have found out fairly quickly, and all of Pietro’s arguments were rendered inherently flawed. Of course no one cared. Well, no one except for Pietro cared. And maybe Evan, but Kurt hadn’t asked Evan if he’d gotten over his crush on Pietro yet, and that wasn’t quite the same. “So what’s the deal?”

“He was having a panic attack. What was I supposed to do, _not_ help him?” Kurt muttered into his knees.

“We were across the hall,” Kitty said, “How could you have known?”

“It was obvious?” Kurt knew that Kitty was giving him a chance to come clean to her, but Kurt still couldn’t make himself say the words. Saying them would make it all infinitely more painful, than just knowing that it was all true.

“This isn’t the first time you two have handled Pietro's panic attacks together. Is it?” Kurt didn’t say anything, and Kitty rolled her eyes. “Rogue is probably on her way over to the Brotherhood House. She and Wanda are hanging out tonight, and she’ll find out everything. If it comes to that, I can just beg it out of her later.” Kurt was still stuck on the fact that not only were Rogue and Wanda on speaking terms, they got along well enough to hang out. Rogue was friends with his _sister_ and Kurt was sure that Pietro had known that. It was the last straw for Kurt’s frazzled emotions, and he felt the floodgates burst.

“I hate him.” He spat. Kitty squeaked, as if startled to hear it. Or maybe he was shouting. He couldn’t tell, his head was too full of noise. Kurt couldn’t blame her, though. At any other time, with any other person, he wouldn’t even dream of saying something so harsh. “No, I don’t hate him. We were friends.” Kurt sighed, his voice muffled as he tried to bury himself back inside Blanket Mountain. “At least, I thought we were friends.” He felt his hands start to shake with the weight of refusing to break down.

“Kurt?”

“He told me that we needed to stop being friends, though, and we have, and I would have told you, except at first- it was Pietro, you know? Why would I want anyone to know that I was hanging out with that slime ball? Ha, but he’s not a slime ball. At least, I didn’t think he was. He was nice, and he’s funny, and the prank war was technically started by me, not the brotherhood, but you didn’t know that because we didn’t know how to tell anyone that we were friends! And then... then I wanted to respect that he didn’t want to tell anybody that we were friends, and it shouldn’t hurt this much, but I went and fell in love with him, and it totally screwed me up. And to top it off-” The words bubbled up, after the first poisonous sentence, and wouldn’t stop coming until he had to stop to let his breathing catch up to him. “To top it off, as if it weren’t already bad enough that I’m in love with him, I thought he felt the same way. I mean, it makes sense that he doesn’t, but-” The words caught in his throat. Even after all that he’d already said, he couldn’t bring himself to mention the kiss, especially now that he knew for certain that it meant nothing to Pietro. That it probably had just been Kurt's imagination, or an accident. He didn’t realize he’d started crying until Kitty wiped the tears from his cheeks and pulled him into a hug. “Don’t- don’t say anything to him. Or Lance? Please. I don’t want him to know how pathetic I am.”

“You’re not pathetic!” Kitty said vehemently, and she sounded like she would be willing to kill Pietro just for that sentence alone, but she quieted. “I won’t tell him how you feel.” Kurt tried to pull back to look at her with as much suspicion as he felt, but she wouldn’t let him out of her embrace. “I won’t tell him anything.” She amended. “He doesn’t get the satisfaction of knowing that his assholery made an impact.”

Kurt laughed, but the tears still caught in his throat made the sound come out strangled and he knew that not even Kitty was convinced.

 

XII.

 

A few days later, Kurt woke to open windows and a note on his bedside table.

 _Shred it_. Was his first thought. _Don’t even look at it._ Was his second. He should just leave it there, listen to Kitty and act like it hadn’t made an impact. Like the fact that Pietro had done something like this wasn’t breaking him, more than a little.

He reached for the image inducer, and couldn’t even feign surprise when he grabbed the note instead.

_Kurt-_

_I hope that enough time has passed between my previous panic attack and now for you to believe me when I say that I genuinely mean everything I’m saying._

_I’m sorry. I messed up, I shouldn’t have treated you like you weren’t good enough to tell my family and friends about, because you are. You’re more than enough. Your friendship means the world to me, and if you would be willing to give me another chance, I’d like to be able to explain myself, face-to-face. Please meet me by the bleachers this morning before school. I have quite a bit that won’t fit in a letter, or won’t make sense unless I can explain face to face._

_You have every right to hate me, and if you don’t come, then I won’t hold it against you. How could I? I wouldn’t come, if I were in your position._

_I never wanted to hurt you, and even if you don’t come, I want you to know that I am sincerely sorry that I did._

_-Pietro._

Writing letters had never been something that they did. Pietro had dropped the odd note in his bag, even after the Prank War, but letters were a far different story.

He wasn’t going to go, he decided.

He got up and went to shut the windows, but he found himself staring down at the trees surrounding the school and wondering...

Why would Pietro risk being caught, just to bring Kurt a fake note? To give him false hope, maybe, but even Pietro wouldn’t be that cruel.

He searched, in vain, for silver hair among the barely-budding trees, but Pietro was already long gone.

He wasn’t going to go.

 _I wouldn’t come, either._ He could hear that sentence so clearly in Pietro’s voice, it was like he was standing beside Kurt. It held a little bit of humor, a lot of sadness, and some self-depreciation that Kurt still wished wasn’t there, even if this was just his mind playing tricks on him.

He shouldn’t go. It could be a trap. It could just set Kurt up for more heartbreak.

He wouldn’t go. It was a bad idea, all around, and seeing Pietro again, even if it was to hear some half-hearted apology that Lance or Wanda had probably talked him into, wasn’t worth the pain that hearing the “explanation” Pietro had prepped would give him.

He went anyway.

He walked, to give himself more time to change his mind.

He tried to talk himself out of it the entire way there.

He kept thinking about Pietro’s face as he left the football field the other day. The way the hope had left his eyes and made them look flat and dead inside. Pietro didn’t deserve a second chance, but that hadn’t stopped Kurt from leaving a note on the kitchen counter that he’d gone to study for a test before school, and slipping another one under Kitty’s door that told her that he was probably going to need serious medical attention, or at least another Disney movie before the day ended.

Kurt decided that the best thing to do would be bite the bullet. He teleported to a spot about ten feet away from where they used to meet. From his vantage point, he could see the entire field, as well as where Pietro had told Kurt to meet him.

Pietro was nowhere to be seen.

Kurt didn’t know why he was surprised. Pietro was a grade-a asshole. He probably sent the letter as a joke, or something.

Kurt didn’t believe a word of that, but it was making him feel better to think it.

And it proved just how long he’d been out of Pietro’s company that he didn’t notice the displacement of the air when Pietro stopped moving.

“You came.” Pietro’s voice was breathless, full of wonder, almost, like he couldn’t believe his eyes. Kurt turned to face him, and his heart stopped beating for long enough that Kurt thought he should be worried.

The pure, unadulterated joy on Pietro’s face was bright enough to outshine even one of Jubilee’s largest fireworks. He looked slightly out of breath, and his hair was wind-tossed, even more so than usual.

“I was running laps around the school, I didn’t think you’d come.” Pietro said, his voice still breathless, his smile still firmly in place. Laps meant that Pietro had been nervous, and apparently, the nervousness had stemmed from the idea that Kurt would leave him hanging. Kurt folded his arms, like that would give him some sort of protection against Pietro’s smile.

“You said you wanted to explain?” He said, taking a small step back.

“Right,” Pietro sobered, and Kurt wanted to tell him to keep smiling, but that would be weird. “First off, I wanted to say that-”

“Kurt!” Storm’s unmistakable voice cried out. She and Jean landed a few steps away, Storm dropping Jean to the ground before landing (much more gracefully) beside her. Kurt wanted to scream. He needed two more minutes, at the least, but Storm and Jean were in their battle gear, and Pietro had taken about a dozen steps back, leaving a clear space between himself and Kurt. A clear space that Kurt felt like an extra presence beside him. He tried to keep himself from projecting anything, but from the confused and slightly offended look on Jean’s face, he was afraid that a poorly timed ‘fuck off!’ had made it through the barricade of his thoughts. “We have to go, Cerebro has just given us information on a new telepath that we need to recruit.”

“Do you really need me for that?” Kurt tried not to groan.

“I know that you meant to get here early to study, but you’re one of our best Kurt-”

“What are you doing here?” Jean interrupted, but her eyes were locked on something behind Kurt, a glare that not even Rogue wanted directed at her leveled straight at Pietro.

“I run laps in the morning.” Pietro said, managing to sound the perfect combination of bored and pissed off. He gestured airily at the track by the football field, his face completely closed off, convincingly enough that Kurt wondered momentarily if he hadn’t imagined the happiness there only moments ago. “You X-Geeks don’t own the school you know.” His eyes flicked to Kurt, and there was some measure of hurt in them. “Here, I’ll show you.” He smirked, saluted, and was gone.

Kurt didn’t know where he was headed to, but he figured that Pietro wouldn’t be coming back.

He was right.

Even once the X-Men retrieved the telepath (some terrified blonde girl who seemed to take an immediate liking to Jean) and snuck into school again, Pietro was nowhere to be found.

Kurt wondered if there was any chance he’d try to reach out and explain again.

Probably not.

Kurt wasn’t even surprised to be ignored in their shared class the next day.

Missing Pietro when he was three inches away was just going to be part of his life now, it seemed.

 

XIII.

Every time that Rogue caught sight of Pietro, she would give him a look that spoke of universes full of Painful Questions.

So, he avoided her like she was the sole carrier of the plague, and he was the last person on earth who could catch it.

He was lucky when it came to school, because he had no classes with her, and he knew the Ultimate Secrets of the hallways, (due to the fact that a five-minute passing period could be stretched into a leisurely walk to the roof and the secret basement facilities that Mystique had kept hidden from, well, everyone) so escaping her there was easy, as well. He didn’t know why Rogue was suddenly so keen to talk to him, but you physically can’t have a telepath for a twin and not pick up on a few things. Like social cues, and what it looks like when someone has something (probably murder) in mind for you.

He didn’t expect her to start showing up at the Brotherhood House again. Never in a million years would he have thought to prepare for that. And yet she was over on a semi regular basis. He could generally avoid her by taking timed runs to anywhere-but-there when he caught the end of Wanda’s train of thought.

Their telepathic bond had been damaged, possibly irreparably, by her time in the asylum. The first time that he’d stopped hearing her thoughts in the back of his head, he ran through a thunderstorm at the age of probably ten, because he thought she’d died. No one would let him in, and his father had finally caught up to him, only to find him glaring at the orderlies in his best “Dad’s pissed off” imitation a ten-year-old could muster. It was a little bit ruined by the fact that he kept shivering and sneezing, because his legs might be able to run faster than the rain, but standing outside in it for over three hours would still make his ten-year-old immune system shut down.

He could visit, but only when Wanda was asleep. He came as often as they would let him, because not being able to see Wanda was bad enough, but not being able to hear her thoughts was torture, because if he couldn’t hear them, there was no guarantee that she was truly alive. Nevertheless, he’d been convinced she needed this to get better, so he breathed easier when he got to see her, through a pane of shatterproof glass, of course. He wasn’t allowed anywhere closer.

He got used to the dark spots in his brain where Wanda should have been.

He tried not to think about the rest. They were trying to fix it, anyway. She still didn’t trust him, but even without their bond, she still knew when he was lying, and when he was telling the truth, and she knew that leaving her behind wasn’t his choice, and that he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it either. If anything, she was just still irritated that he’d saved their father instead of letting him die, but he could sense that she understood, either way.

He also knew that the damage to the bond that they’d had from birth was irritating to her, as well. It meant that her powers were still broken, still potentially beyond repair, and that just fueled her anger towards their father, and Pietro by association.

He wouldn’t rest until he could get them back to normal, though.

This probably meant that he wasn’t going to rest at all for a very long time. He was good at breaking relationships, as was evidenced now by both his relationship with his sister, and his salted-and-burnt friendship with Kurt.

Fixing them was another matter entirely.

One he’d never had to deal with before. He’d never had friends before who were better than he was. They were all equally damaged like Lance, but Wanda was inherently _good_ , staying on their side was more to do with the fact that she trusted Pietro’s duplicity more than Xavier’s false hopes, and Kurt was...

Kurt was Kurt.

He rubbed at his eyes, trying to get his racing thoughts to focus on the math homework in front of him. There was a dim, far off corner of his brain that was still doing the equations, racing through them because he was good at math, when he wasn’t worrying about eighty other things, too, but he couldn’t get that part of his mind to come up to the forefront of his stream of consciousness.  

 _Wanda?_ He thought. Sometimes, if she was feeling generous, she’d soothe the racing currents of his brain, so that he could finish what he was doing _now_ and panic _later_. There was static at the other end of the thought, like a radio that had been turned to _almost_ the right station. He sighed.

What did other people do when they couldn’t concentrate? He wondered. The rational part of his brain said “take a break, come back to it later” and the part of his brain that was raised by Magneto said “set the book on fire.”

He pushed his desk chair back and resisted the urge to call John.

Pietro hadn’t even considered that Rogue might be over, because, well, it’s not like his brain was cooperating at the moment. It didn’t come so much as a surprise as it did an ambush.

He was stealing tea from Mystique (he had a healthy sense of self destruction, and she didn’t _really_ mind as long as it was replaced before they ran out) when Wanda and Rogue walked in.

Wanda looked far too innocent, which made Pietro wonder, idly, if she’d just been ignoring him earlier, and she had heard his request for help. Or maybe she’d just guided him out of his room and into the kitchen. He couldn’t be certain. Rogue eyed him like she was trying to find the best way to eviscerate him with words.

Everyone and their dog knew that he deserved it. She popped open the fridge and took out a bottle of water. Her eyes never left his face, as she violently (it might not have been violent, but Pietro was used to viewing her as his most potent threat) twisted the cap off.

“So why does Kurt hate you?” She asked, still refusing to break eye contact.

There was no way that she missed the way that Pietro flinched at the words.

“There’s no way that he hates you.” She continued, as if she weren’t aware of Pietro’s life shattering into pieces around him, “If it were anybody else I’d just say that it was common sense, but my brother doesn’t hate anyone.” Pietro’s hand spasmed around the mug he was holding, and it was by the barest interference on Wanda’s part that it didn’t shatter in his grip. He let her telekinesis pull it from his hand and set it on the counter behind him.

“Your what?” He croaked.

“My brother. Kurt’s my brother.” There was a squeak from the doorway, and Pietro turned to see Mystique standing there with a stricken look on her face. Rogue raised an eyebrow at her. “If you didn’t want me to know, you should have signed the adoption papers with a different name.” She said coolly, and Pietro took the opportunity that this provided to run as fast and as far as he could, leaving behind his sister and the awkward situation that was no doubt unfolding.

 _He hates you_. The words echoed in Pietro’s ears. It shouldn't have been what he focused on. What he should be focusing on was that apparently, Mystique had adopted Rogue (had been _allowed_ to adopt Rogue, somehow, legally. Or maybe not legally) and nobody knew about it. But that brought his thoughts back around to Kurt, which brought him back to: _Kurt hates you_.

The words caught in his throat. That hadn't come from nowhere. Rogue had to have heard that from somewhere and passed it on. Kurt hated him, and the worst part was that Pietro couldn't even blame him for it. Pietro was a complete and utter coward, and-

“Stop that.” Lance was at his desk, leaning back in his chair like he belonged in it. Pietro glared and marched towards his bed.

“I have homework you know.”

“You had one problem left. I can mimic your handwriting. You’re done with your homework and you can thank me later.”

Pietro sat down on the edge of his bed and flopped backwards, half hoping he’d judge the distance wrong and fall hard enough to think about something that wasn’t Kurt.

He didn’t.

“What are you doing here, Lance?” Pietro asked, running a hand across his face, and trying to banish the image of a fanged smile from behind his eyelids.

“You’re pouting, and I know that there are two surefire ways to get you to stop pouting.” Pietro scoffed.  
“I’m not going to make out with you while you’re dating someone, Lance.” Lance huffed a laugh at his words, poking Pietro in the ribs, and Pietro ignored the guilty part of him that was still lying. Lance dating someone had never been a hindrance to their arrangement in the past, but Pietro knew that _this_ time was different. This time, the entire time, he’d be thinking about Kurt.

And Kitty was Kurt’s best friend.

He was just a black hole of guilt at the thought.

“I was actually referencing option two.” Lance said, and the self-satisfied way that he said it made Pietro think that he’d unwittingly confirmed something for Lance.

Fuck it.

“Tell me option two is blowing shit up.”

“What kind of friend would I be if option two _wasn’t_ blowing shit up?” Lance stood up. “Go get Wanda, we’re going to see exactly what kind of havoc we can wreak.”

Pietro would have preferred to leave behind the one person who was speaking to him that made him feel like a pile of sentient pond scum, but he had an idea of what Lance had in mind, and he knew Wanda would need to be a part of it.

He took Lance by the arm and ran them both downstairs to pull the uncomfortable looking Wanda from beside the staring match Rogue and Mystique seemed to be locked in.

Five minutes later, Lance was trying to get their mental link to sync back up so that they could fight him in tandem.

It took three hours, and by the end of it, Pietro was exhausted, sweating, but feeling triumphant for the first time in weeks. He could feel Wanda’s excitement from where she sat next to him, or maybe he was feeling it through their bond. The knowledge was natural enough that he couldn’t quite tell.

He thought that that had to be a good sign for them.

The best part was that by the time they were done, he hadn’t thought about Kurt for three hours.

Well, mostly.

 

XIV.

 

Pietro realized, abruptly and painfully, that he shouldn’t have been afraid of Rogue.

He should have been afraid of Kitty.

Sure, he could outrun them both, and sure they could only hurt him if they caught him first, but he didn’t expect Kitty to put effort into tracking him down.

There was only one other person who knew that he came here, ever, and Kurt hadn’t come back to this spot in ages, no matter how much Pietro wished he would. It wasn’t _their_ spot the way that the football field was, but Kurt had tracked him down a few times.

Even though he kept trying to get over Kurt, to cast him from his mind because Kurt deserved so much better, Pietro kept thinking about him.

It took every ounce of self-control to stay face front in their class together, and try and give Kurt the space he needed.

 _Kurt deserves better than you_. Was the thought that kept him moving forward. He would find better friends than Pietro in a heartbeat. Kurt was beautiful, he was amazing, he would find the people who could give him the friendship he needed without-

Without falling in love with him ten seconds after racing him the first time.

Not that he thought anyone else would ever be able to keep pace with Kurt the way that he had been able to.

No one would fit him the same way, and Pietro knew that he should give Kurt the option, but if he did that, if he told Kurt the real reason that he’d shattered their friendship beyond repair, it would drive Kurt further away. And Kurt leaving would hurt far worse than Pietro ruining everything. At least now, it was on his terms.

All of this went through his head as he felt Kitty’s hand close around his ankle and pull him to the ground.

 _Through_ the ground.

He hit the floor at her feet, his face connecting with concrete. He didn't feel anything break, which meant that today was going to be a lucky day for him.

Sarcasm didn't work as well in his head as it did when he spoke.

He looked up at Kitty and was almost surprised to find Lance standing sheepishly next to her.

He moved into a sitting position and stood slowly, trying to make sure that he didn't fall again. He leaned against the wall behind him, stepping away from Kitty, out of range of the abruptly terrifying ability she had to pass through objects.

He was going to have nightmares for weeks about her using her abilities to block his airway or remove his vital organs.

He glared at them both in turn, steadfastly ignoring the fact that it was halfhearted at best.

"Can I help you?" He asked. Kitty leveled a glare of her own at Pietro, who resigned himself to death in the secret underground basement of the school building.

"You can explain why you're such a piece of shit." She snarled.

"Easy. Genetics." Pietro deadpanned. Lance disguised a laugh as a cough, but he couldn't stop the corner of his mouth from twitching in amusement.

"Okay, then, smartass, here's another question: how did you convince Kurt that you weren't a piece of shit?" Pietro was pleased that he managed to keep his face mostly blank, but he looked up at the ceiling, just in case something slipped through.

"Kurt likes to see the best in people. You're his best friend, you know that."

Pietro wondered, suddenly, how she knew.

How had Rogue known?

"What did Kurt tell you?" He asked, tonelessly.

"He didn't have to tell me anything. You two aren't exactly the subtlest people alive." She scoffed. It sounded odd with her light voice. This level of scorn was meant to be for people like him, people like Lance. People with voices like Kitty's were meant to get that easier life, one that didn't involve villains, and constant death-defying stunts. But the world wasn’t kind enough to keep people to their assigned roles, and this was the straw that Kitty had drawn. "I've known for ages that you two- I know that he considered you his friend." She said coolly. "And I know that you've been in love with him for weeks."

Pietro flinched visibly and cursed himself for it.

Damn, she was good. He didn't know if she'd actually known that or not, but she did now.

And so did Lance.

And if the two of them knew, who the hell else had been perceptive enough to realize the truth?

Did Kurt know? Is that why he'd given up?

No, Pietro knew that even if he had known, he wouldn't have given up if Pietro hadn't done so first. He wouldn't have left Pietro if he weren't certain that Pietro wanted nothing to do with him.

At least Pietro was a good liar in that respect.

"What do you _want_ , Kitty?" He sighed.

"I want you to suck it up and apologize to Kurt. And I want you to explain things to him."

"Fuck off, Kitty." He sighed. "I'm not going to do that. You and I both know that he deserves better than that."

"Deserves better than knowing that you love him?"

"I don't need his pity. And I've already wrecked our friendship enough that he doesn't have to do it himself. I took one for the team, you're welcome." He spat. "Kurt has nothing to feel bad about, and we can all go back to hating each other." Kitty still looked dubious.

"He told me you were planning to explain things to him the other day." She insisted, and Pietro sighed, feeling sick.

"Yeah, well, that was before I thought it through and realized that it was an objectively terrible idea and he was never going to feel the same way about me. And where I'd already ruined everything, why would I go back and explain and just make things worse? He'd feel guilty for not liking me back, and I'd wind up feeling like even more of an ass, and right now I'm kind of at maximum capacity, if you can believe it." Kitty looks at him like she couldn't quite believe it, but her glare was gone, at least. She no longer looked like she wanted to phase her fist through his chest and break all his ribs.

"Why are you so sure he won't love you back?" She said, and he saw Lance flinch out of the corner of his eye. He kept his eyes fixed on Kitty, because he was sure that if he looked at Lance, he'd actually tell Kitty the truth. Lance knew every single reason that Pietro had sabotaged his relationship with Kurt. At the very least he could take an educated guess and land in the ballpark.

He was intimately aware of all of Pietro's issues, despite the fact that not one of them had been what had caused their short-lived relationship to crash and burn.

Pietro knows that he can count on Lance to tell her all of that later.

"I could give you an itemized list, but you should just take my word for it. He deserves a lot more than what I've got to offer." He can see Kitty opening her mouth, offended at something or another. She might have even been opening her mouth to defend Pietro, but he couldn't handle any more of this half-interrogation. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have people to ignore and a class to get to."

He didn't give her a chance to protest. His head was clear for lift off, and he knew this god damned basement like the back of his hand. Even without his super speed, he could have outmaneuvered her and escaped any further questioning.

He skipped his class. He'd catch up on the workload later, but what was the point in pretending that he couldn't feel Kurt's presence directly behind him? What was the point in trying to ignore Kurt when all he wanted to do was turn around and beg for a third fucking chance?

He knew there was a point to it, but he couldn't make his brain focus on it, and if he took the chance now, he knew he would wind up breaking down.

Better to avoid the problem entirely.

And as a speedster, his avoidance tactics were stellar.

 

XV.

 

Some days were better than others. Some days, happy days, where he thought he could be better than what life and his father had made him, he woke with his mother's voice in his head, encouraging him.

Most days, he did not. And his father's voice was always much clearer, much _louder_.

Today was not one of those good days, but he could pretend that it was. He had to pretend that it was, because, for the first time in a very long time, Wanda was trying to trust him. She needed him today, and he was not going to let her down.

He tried to kill the voice in the back of his head that told him he'd let her down, anyway. He ignored it telling him that he was weak, that he was worthless, and that because of his incompetence, Wanda's powers would stay broken.

He shoved those words inside of Schrödinger’s matroshka, and tried to focus on the path in front of him.

He and Wanda were walking to one of the smaller parks in Bayville. It was closer to the outskirts of town, and older, less well-kept than the one in the heart of the city, but that suited their needs today just fine. It meant that the park would be quieter, it would have fewer people, it would be easier for Wanda to concentrate on her meditation tactics.

Pietro hoped that that would be true.

He needed to prove his inner voice (the one that currently may or may not have existed) wrong.

The old woman hobbling in front of them finally sat on a park bench and motioned for Wanda and Pietro to take a seat on the grass across the path, so that they were in full view of her.

The idea today was that, if they were incredibly lucky, Pietro would be able to help stabilize Wanda's rampant abilities when she lost control. The woman (whose name Pietro had never bothered to learn, a fact he felt slightly guilty about now) had seemed to conclude that the fact that Pietro had been such a guiding force in the development of Wanda's abilities, and vice versa, that without each other, their control, and their strength had diminished greatly.

Pietro wasn't sure if that was correct or not, but he figured that if there was any way that he could help Wanda regain control of her abilities, then he'd do anything he could to help her. And that was only partially his guilt talking.

Dutifully, the two of them sat cross-legged on the grass facing each other.

"Wanda," The woman began, "clear your mind, try to focus on finding your center." The woman sounded exhausted, as if resigned to this not working. Pietro forced down his anger, his automatic urge on bad days to react... well, poorly. He knew that a violent or even semi-violent reaction would set them back, and might even set Wanda off.

He'd just have to prove her wrong, instead.

He focused on clearing his own mind, as well, figuring that if they were going to try to do this, they might as well both go all in. He tried to clear his mind, but even on good days getting his thoughts to slow was difficult. He considered letting himself speed up to the point where everything around him was still and silent. That was an environment that he could control. That was an environment he could feel safe and calm in, but he realized quickly that there was no guarantee that Wanda would be able to follow him there. He tried to focus on the environment around him, next. He focused on the slight breeze on his face and in the leaves of the trees up above him. He focused on where the dew left over from the morning was sinking into the knees of his jeans. He tried to regulate his breathing to slow himself down, as every meditation pamphlet he'd ever skimmed had advised, but that was more difficult. Slowing down was the cause of most of his problems, because it was the one thing that he consistently failed at.

But Wanda needed him to, so he focused on staying in the moment, and closing out any outside thoughts. When he felt calm enough (or at least as close as he knew he was going to get), he ignored the monotonous tone of the woman's voice and reached out to Wanda telepathically. He wasn't sure, at first, if he was doing it right, but he was focused, mentally, on her, and on what he thought had to be the shields she constantly had secured around her mind.

No wonder telepathy was so hard for them, he thought, if she guarded her mind so forcefully that she couldn't even look out without being afraid that she would lose control and her shields would crumble for good.

 _Wanda?_ He thought, doing his best to channel a mental knock against her shields. After another few moments, and he knew that she had to be hearing him, he felt as though one of the walls surrounding her mind lowered a fraction, and he managed to get a thought through to her. _Ten bucks says she falls asleep before she gives us another command._

He _felt_ Wanda roll her eyes. His own were closed, but the sensation was familiar.

_Just because you don't think that this will work-_

_Wands, it is working._ Pietro protested, and he felt a sudden wave of fear wash over her, and her walls snapped halfway back into place as she started to lose control, clearly afraid of hurting him.

Well, he realized, it wasn't clear that that was what she was afraid of. But he could feel his certainty that this was the truth more potently, even, than he could feel her fear.

And that was saying something.

For a moment, he could only watch, horrified, as Wanda relived what had to be their worst shared memory. He heard the anguished screams that she made as the orderlies dragged her away from the car. The urge to move, to stop this, had never been stronger, but the grip on his shoulder was firm and heavy, and he knew that going with her wasn't an option.

He tried to stop the memory of his own from blending with Wanda's giving him a headache as he watched the scene from two perspectives, as if he was watching a movie play out from points of view of two different characters on two screens side by side, but he couldn't stop the rising image of being shoved back into the sleek black car, of begging to know why he couldn't go with her, and if Wanda was so sick, why didn't they stay with her to make sure she got better?

He watched, riveted and horrified, as Wanda's screams died down, a needle pulling from her arm and her vision going fuzzy.

He reached out, not in his mind (and making that distinction was odd, like he was trying to move through water, or play piano with both hands for the first time in years) and took Wanda's hand.

Physical contact always grounded him, reminded him that he was real. He thought that it might, somehow, help ground Wanda, too.

 _It's okay,_ He thought, trying to be heard over the sound of their clashing memories, _You're in control._

Wanda held onto his hand in a crushing grip, one that Pietro was almost certain broke at least one of his fingers, but instead of trying to fight the painful memory off, as she'd gotten so used to doing, Pietro could feel her leaning on him, focusing on his half of the memory, instead of her own, as she tried to finally let herself move past it.   _I'm sorry,_ Pietro thought to her as he could feel their bond again wavering and starting to slip. _I'm so sorry I let this happen. I thought-_ He didn't need to say any more though, as their father barked out an answer to Pietro's unending list of questions.

 _She's sick, Pietro._ He placated, his voice as clear in Pietro's memory as the day that he'd said it. Pietro's weak, childish protests were drowned out as he continued to talk. _She's going to stay there until she gets better._ Any other protests that Pietro may have had were shut down by his tone. They both knew that tone, and it meant that if Pietro continued to try and push the issue, it would not end well for them, and Pietro worried that he might try to keep Wanda away longer.

Eventually, Pietro knew, Wanda would find out that he'd visited her. And she would find out that he'd lost hope. He'd thought that there was no way Wanda would get better, and even then, they'd be strangers to each other.

Both, Pietro realized, knowing that Wanda would hear his train of thought given that they were still linked, had come true in their own way.

Like storm clouds parting overhead, Pietro watched as the memory dissipated and their vision shifted back to the park. He felt Wanda's mind settle and as it did, he felt something click into place.

Wanda let go of his hand and curled in on herself, but Pietro's eyes refocused in time to notice the tears on her face before she hid it between her knees. He stretched out his fingers, pleased to see that none of them had actually broken, and noticed that there had been an effect on the area around them.

The grass beneath them was dead in an almost perfect circle. There were cracks in the sidewalk that Pietro knew for a fact hadn't been there before they sat down.

But no one was hurt.

Whatever it was that fueled Wanda's abilities had been reigned in before it could do any real damage. The woman who normally helped Wanda try to meditate looked shocked.

Pietro resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her. They weren't five years old, anymore, and anyway, Wanda needed him more.

 _We probably need to talk about a few things, now that you can stand to be around me for more than five minutes at a time_. Pietro thought, aiming for a glib tone.

 _You didn't want to leave me there?_ Wanda steamrolled past his suggestion, and Pietro adjusted his position, kicking her shoe with his own so that she would look at him. He let a few of his other memories pass through their bond, memories of him threatening orderlies, of him sitting outside of her room for hours, just in case being close to her would help her get better-

-Being told that her condition was unstable, and she was being forced into isolation, told that he wasn't allowed to come and even visit, anymore.

That memory came through, unbidden. She'd been in that cube for years, and he hadn't been allowed to see her since months before the cube was built.

 _That was professor Xavier's suggestion._ Wanda said, almost hesitant to let any emotion through at all. _Even he thought I was too dangerous to be let outside._

Pietro tried to remind himself that locking the professor inside of an inescapable room would be a bad idea, and frowned upon, at that. Part of him still wanted to do it. Wanda had been subjected to that for years, he figured it was only fair.

 _Sit down,_ He thought, after a minute. The best revenge would be proving all of them wrong. _You have meditation and mutation related exercises to do._

He was going to help Wanda control her powers if it killed him.

 

XVI.

 

The one constant, over the next few days, was that Pietro didn't shut down their telepathic bond. Something about Wanda realizing that this was a burden she didn't have to bear alone, that the weight of her powers being dangerous was something that they could handle together made it an easy decision.

Well, that and he'd been having a good few days.

The past few years, he had been stuck with either his mother's voice or his father's voice drifting through his thoughts and determining the general outcome of the day.

Having Wanda in the back of his head, a real _concrete_ presence, instead of just a vessel for his worst fears or his better moments, made Pietro's days a little bit better. He didn't have to worry about the days he wouldn't have to hear his mother's voice, or when his father would just leave him alone, because he didn't have to worry about either one of them.

Wanda was there instead.

She was real, she was alive, she was his sister, and little did she know, but she was helping him just as much as he was helping her. Their bond was steadier now, and while that meant that he had to get used to only having parts of his brain to himself again, it definitely kept him feeling like he was in control as well.

But then again, he had been focusing on her powers, rather than staying in the confines of his own mind.

And today? Today he was _not_ in control.

He'd known from the moment he opened his eyes that everyone would be better off today if he just stayed in bed. Of course, he was far too wired to even do that, but it was less the action and more the sentiment that counted.

 _Pull yourself together,_ his father's voice snarled.

 _No one's going to like you if they think you're not normal,_ His mother's voice sniffed, and those words were a mockery to her memory, because she'd never said anything like that to him, to either of them.

He was desperately glad that Wanda was still asleep.

Between the time that Pietro woke up and the time that his alarm rang, there was just enough of a gap for him to lock their disapproval of him in a box and shove it in the darkest pits of his mind.

He hoped that it would keep Wanda from noticing, or from feeling the negative effects of his thoughts, and how had he only now started to wonder about the debilitating effect that his panic attacks could have on her? Just because he was suffering doesn't mean that he had to be.

By the time he dragged himself down the stairs, he was too exhausted to even think.

He hoped that would be enough.

It wasn't enough.

Too many people noticed that he was off, today, and the one person who knew that he dealt with this regularly, the one person he wanted to talk to, had made it perfectly clear that he wanted nothing to do with Pietro.

Wanda sent a thought floating in Pietro's general direction, and he knew that she'd realized he was off, too. He knew that she was trying to help, in her own way, and he latched onto the distraction.

This could go so very very wrong, he thought, but it was a risk that he thought he needed to take, that he needed to focus on, before he exploded.

He could feel Wanda concentrating from rooms away.

The two of them had managed to use their bond to see through each other's eyes on occasion, and Wanda wanted to see if she could extend her range of telepathy through him. They'd been talking about making the attempt, the risks and logistics of it, for ages it seemed.

Pietro was more than happy to let today be the day that they tried to make it work.

Clearing his mind was a simple task, today, given that he'd shoved every other thought into the back of his mind as it was, and the rest of his brain was too foggy to try and think for itself, leaving the intrusive thoughts to take the stage.

Wanda focused on the professor first, who was currently nodding along to something that one of the students in the corner was saying. What was her name? Amy? Marcie?

Honestly, Pietro couldn't have cared less at that particular moment in time.

The professor's voice rang high and clear in his mind. She was desperately trying to push the student's answer in the right direction with her thoughts and facial expressions.

 _That's... really sweet._ Wanda thought.

_She cares. This is making me emotional, Wanda pick someone who will make me hate the world again._

_Hilarious. You know this is a huge invasion of privacy._

_Privacy? What's that? I've had a sister who can read my thoughts for the grand majority of my life_. He drawled, ignoring the thought that came to both of them that that wasn't the only reason they never had any privacy.

When your father trusts no one, odds are good that he won't trust you either. That and Wanda had been living under intense scrutiny for the past few years.

 _He's really still. I hope everything's okay_. Kurt's voice was as clear as if he had spoken directly in Pietro's ear. Fear struck down to his core.

 _Not him, Wanda_.

 _I'm not trying to read his mind, I swear. He's just really really focused on you._ Wanda's voice sounded strained, now, like she was trying to reign her powers back in.

_Wands-_

_It's none of my business,_ Kurt's voice continued, _He doesn't want anything to do with me. He won't try to be friends again no matter how much I miss him._

 _Wanda_! Pietro thought more urgently. He didn't need to hear this. He didn't want to hear this. Kurt didn't need more reasons to-

Kurt missed him.

The thought should have been a light in the swirling darkness of his current thoughts, but his own personal Pandora's box had been splitting at the seams for hours, and that first initial wave of panic was enough to blow it open.

Everything came crashing down onto him, and he had just enough time to think _Wanda doesn't need to hear this_ before he shut down their bond and he was left alone with his thoughts.

When the panic finally faded, he was alone in one of the practice rooms in the orchestra hallway.

He wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten there, but a quick glance to the side told him all he needed to know.

Wanda sat next to him, worry practically tangible in the air around her.

"Sorry," He said, after a moment. "Sometimes I just can't slow down enough to get it under control."

"You don't need to apologize for that. I- how often does this happen?" Pietro shrugged and resisted the urge to lie, or run away.

"Less than it used to. More than I want it to."

"So every time you block me, it's because you're dealing with this by yourself?"

"Well, no, it just means I'm dealing with it. Kurt helped me with it for a while." Wanda's gaze darkened.

"And then what? He just decided he was better off without you?"

"No! No, I went and- I screwed things up between us. And I wish I could undo it, but I can't. And I know we've been trying to fix your telepathy and stuff, but that wasn't," Pietro took a deep breath, "That's not something that you should have to deal with, too."

He expected a variety of responses to that question.

None of them involved Wanda punching him in the arm.

"Ow!" He yelped, turning a glower onto his sister.

"Dumbass." She growled. "You shutting everyone out doesn't help you, and you shutting me out doesn't help me."

And, okay, that was fair.

But it didn't mean his arm hurt any less.

"You okay to talk? Or do you want me to not ask you all the questions you're going to have to answer at some point?" Wanda asked, her voice even. Pietro considered the two options, delay the interrogation and be left alone, or answer a series of painful questions now that would probably suck even more energy from his already exhausted brain.

The mere thought of doing the first option sent a wave of fear through him strong enough that it wasn’t a fair competition between the two at all. Tentatively, he lowered the mental shields that he'd so securely rebuilt during his panic attack.

Wanda sent a question his way, and slowly, as slowly as he could manage, he began to explain.

 

XVII.

 

Pietro nursed the purpling bruises on his arm as he sat down in class the next day. Wanda had hit him at least another four times throughout their conversation, and he clearly needed to teach her a way to react to things that didn't involve violence.

Slowly, he walked into the classroom that he and Kurt shared for Geography, nerves racing through his bloodstream. He didn't think he'd been this nervous about coming to class since the day they'd become friends.

And here he was again, either about to get punched in the face, or try to apologize, in a very vague way.

He had a lot of very important, very specific things he knew he needed to apologize for. For example: everything he'd ever done, probably ever. But also, he knew he needed to apologize for hurting Kurt, and he needed to apologize for giving up on their friendship so readily. He hoped that Kurt wouldn't ask him for an explanation right away, because he didn't want to lie, but he also didn't think that Kurt would take 'I'm in love with you and that freaked me out' as a reasonable explanation.

He sat through class, alternately nervous and certain that this was the only course of action, the only way that he could pick up the pieces of their shattered friendship and ever hope to put it back together again. He could feel Kurt's presence at his back, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to get this over with or run away, hide out somewhere no one would even recognize the name 'Pietro Maximoff.'

But he stayed, because Kurt deserved better than that.

Pietro could feel Kurt’s presence like it was electric. The air between them was charged, and Pietro could feel it every time Kurt so much as glanced in his direction, because the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Or it could have been wishful thinking, but he had always been instinctively attuned to Kurt’s presence. How he could have thought he could resist the pull the other boy had on him was unfathomable.

The bell rang, and, as he had for the two weeks prior, he felt Kurt’s eyes on the back of his head, he heard Kurt go completely still and he could almost feel the hope that today would be different, that Pietro would turn around to look at him and say something, like they were still friends. Part of him was still convinced that Kurt would be better off without him, and he was sure that that singular part of him always would be convinced that Kurt deserved better than a friend like him.

But he had no self-control left.

He turned around, worrying his lip between his teeth, and met Kurt’s suddenly wide eyes with his own.

“Can- can we talk?” He asked, taking in Kurt’s astonished look. He didn’t quite believe that Pietro was doing this, and truth be told, neither could Pietro. Kurt nodded, suddenly wary.

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Here? I don’t care I just- I just need to say something, and I want you to feel comfortable listening. And if you want to leave at any time, then that’s fine, I’m just glad that you’re willing to listen.”

“Pietro,” Kurt began, a line of humor in his tone, and Pietro felt his cheeks heat.

“Right, okay.” Pietro took a deep breath, turning in his seat so that he could face Kurt more easily. He tried to recall the things he’d planned, on every occasion that he’d let himself slip and want to beg for forgiveness. “What I did to you wasn’t fair. It was spineless and terrible, and I have never regretted anything before in my entire life. I know I owe you an explanation. I owe you a _thousand_ explanations. I hurt you, and as much as I wish I could undo that, I can’t. I will completely understand if you tell me to never speak to you again, to never try to explain again, because I know that leaving last time I tried was a dick move, as was pretty much everything I’ve done recently. But I want to be friends with you again, and if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, or try to, then I swear I will do whatever it takes to win your trust back.”

Kurt bit his lip, and Pietro waited with bated breath for a response. Any response. He looked at Pietro like Pietro kept looking at him: like he couldn’t quite believe this was happening.

Well, Pietro was also certain he wasn’t keeping all his feelings from his face. That very easily might have contributed to the slightly awed expression on Kurt’s face.

Kurt didn’t speak for another long moment, and Pietro felt fear creep down his spine. His mouth went dry and he tried to force back the raging thoughts in his head. He fought back another urge to run away and cleared his throat.

“You, ah, you don’t have to answer right away. I know that you have a lot to consider, but if nothing else, I wanted you to know that I am so sorry that I hurt you. Hurting you-” Pietro closed his eyes again and gripped the back of his desk chair hard enough to that he was worried that the cheap plastic might snap. “I’m really, truly sorry.”

“Thank you.” Kurt said, and Pietro’s eyes snapped back up to him. There was an emotion in his face, in his voice that Pietro couldn’t quite identify. Pietro nodded, half numb with the weight of his feelings for Kurt.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll let you get to class now. That’s- that’s all I had to say.” Pietro stood, clearing his throat.

“When do you want me to get back to you by?” Kurt asked, as if this were a job offer, or a business proposal, and not Pietro putting his heart on the line. Pietro tried for a smile.

“Oh, sometime in the next thirty or so years would be preferable.” Kurt twisted his face into a pout that Pietro knew was much cuter when he wasn’t hiding behind a layer of electromagnetic energy to make him look human. Pietro’s heart fluttered at the thought and he busied himself with putting the rest of his things in his bag, haphazardly. Part of Pietro wanted to reach out to Kurt, but he also knew that Kurt needed his space. That had been the whole damn point of staying away from Kurt in the first place. He wasn’t going to initiate any sort of physical contact until he knew Kurt felt comfortable around him again. “Please, just think about it, that’s all I ask.” Kurt nodded again, and Pietro left, raising a hand in farewell and trying to ignore the thundering of his heart in his ears as he did so.

 

XVIII.

 

Pietro's thoughts were a conflicting whirlwind. He knew that Kurt shouldn't forgive him, and he knew that he needed to explain a few things, and apologize for even more. But more than that, he wanted Kurt to forgive him. He wanted Kurt to be able to look past the horrible things he'd done. He knew Kurt shouldn't do that, but he wanted it more than anything.

But all those worries were rendered null when Kurt sat next to him on the roof of the brotherhood house.

At first Pietro thought that it was some sort of mirage, or Wanda was messing with him, but he'd know if that were the case. For a second, he wondered if Mystique was up to no good, or was trying to torment him somehow, for attempting to befriend her precious son, but that didn't seem quite right, either.

"Hi." He said, after the silence between them had moved far beyond 'stunned' and into 'incredibly awkward.' "Why are you on the roof?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" Kurt said, rolling his eyes and taking a seat next to Pietro. "I was looking for you, and here you are. Your turn."

"Lance was being obnoxious." Pietro snorted, "I mean, what else is new?" A smile twitched on Kurt's face, barely visible before he got it under control.

"Wanda told me she read my mind." Pietro winced.

"Yeah, she didn't mean to, but her abilities are still kind of fritzing. I'm really sorry about that."

"Did you hear what she heard? I know you two are kind of linked mentally." Pietro closed his eyes, feeling guilt start to cloud his mind.

"I heard some. I shut it down before I could hear much, though I swear."

"What did you hear?"  Kurt actually sounded nervous. Pietro couldn't imagine what it was that he could have potentially overheard that had Kurt so distraught.

"I heard that you missed me, too."

"Is that it?" Pietro turned to look at Kurt.

"Yeah, that's it. And I was going to apologize for that, too, but I guess Wanda kind of beat me to the punch." Kurt was chewing on his lower lip, and for the first time, Pietro realized he wasn't wearing his image inducer. At all.

Pietro tried not to take that as a good sign. Or a sign at all. Kurt very easily could have just forgotten it.

Pietro's traitor heart started beating faster anyway. And really, who could blame him? Kurt was beautiful, and up here, against the backdrop that the sky made, he looked almost ethereal.

"Is that why you apologized?"

"What, because I read your mind and felt sorry for you? Come on, Kurt, give me more credit than that." Kurt flinched and Pietro reached out on instinct, pulling Kurt closer to him. "I apologized because you deserved an apology. If you recall, I have tried to apologize a few times before, too." He looked down, trying to gauge Kurt's reaction before he continued, but Kurt had hidden half of his face in Pietro's shoulder and half his face behind his hair. "I've done a lot of things to hurt you in the past. I mean, I've done a lot of things that have hurt a lot of people, but the things I've done to you kind of add up. I mean, back when it was the Brotherhood versus the X-Men every other week I was horrible to you. And I specify you because I'm pretty sure you were the one I fought against most frequently."

"Well, if we're going by that logic, I have a lot to apologize for, too." Kurt mumbled.

"Yeah, but you're one of the good guys, I'm sure it cancels out when you hurt someone in the pursuit of, what would it be? Righteousness? The safety of baby birds or small children?" He felt Kurt giggle and felt his heart swell.

"Mall shop owners around the globe," Kurt suggested, poking Pietro in the side, and Pietro grinned, ignoring his embarrassment as he remembered trapping Kurt in a wedding dress. If only Pietro had known, then, what an utter embarrassment that would wind up being. Talk about dramatic irony.

Kurt lifted his head from Pietro's shoulder, but stayed pressed against his side. They sat like that for long enough that Pietro couldn't stop his mind from wandering.

_I still can't believe I put him in a wedding dress. I guess I couldn't have known that I'd wind up wanting to spend my life with him._

_But why is he here?_

_Does this mean he's willing to forgive me?_

_Would he ever think about dating me?_

_Could he even fall in love with me?_

"Yes." Kurt said, out of the blue, and Pietro almost fell off the roof.

Did he say that out loud? His face flushed red.

"Wh-what?"

"I've made my decision," Kurt said, seemingly unaware of the fact that Pietro's heart was beating its way through his ribcage, or that Pietro's face was as red as the majority of the clothes in Wanda’s closet. "I want to be friends again. So, with that in mind, yes, I forgive you." Pietro wasn't sure if the feeling that washed over him in the wake of his shock was relief or disappointment. Either way, the feeling was quickly replaced by a rising wave of euphoria and he very narrowly prevented himself from pulling Kurt into a crushing hug, but he couldn't stop the delighted grin that stretched across his face.

"Really?"

"Well, what can I say? I missed you." Kurt said, smiling softly up at Pietro for a moment before his face turned serious. "But if you go and do something like that again, I won't be half so forgiving." Pietro gave into the instinct to pull Kurt into a crushing hug.

"That's fair." He said, grinning when Kurt squealed, but wrapped Pietro in an answering hug that matched the strength of Pietro's.

 

XIX.

 

Pietro could have very easily walked on air for the rest of the week, and it showed.

Well, it showed to the people in the Brotherhood house. Mystique kept glaring at him, and Pietro had had enough of resisting all his face-making urges because _Kurt forgave him_ and that meant more than one thousand of Mystique's glares.

Fred and Tabitha thought it was "sweet," though Tabitha had set his bed on fire once she learned what he'd done in the first place. And even Pietro couldn't argue with the logic that had led her to that conclusion. Todd thought it was "gross" but he was also crushing on Wanda, so Pietro couldn't help but ask who the _real_ gross one was between the two (he got hit again, for that one). And Lance...

Lance had brought Kitty over.

And Kitty was glaring. Pietro's eye twitched as he remembered the last time that Lance and Kitty had ganged up on him and he'd wound up falling face-first onto a solid concrete floor. And now she was on his couch. Joy.

"Catherine," He greeted, to irritate her. He dropped down on the couch on her other side, to further irritate her, because now she had to turn to look at him, and because her glare wasn't half so terrifying if he had to look between both of her eyes to see it properly. He knew that he probably shouldn't antagonize her, because she was Kurt's best friend, but she knew the full extent of his feelings for Kurt, so he stayed on the defensive, in case she tried to bury him alive.  "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Are you brainwashing Kurt?" She asked, bluntly. Her tone said that she didn't quite believe it, but he didn't blame her for suspecting foul play. Pietro was still finding it hard to believe that Kurt had forgiven him, himself.

"Fair question. The answer is, astonishingly, no. I just extended the olive branch, he's the one who took it." His shoulders slumped slightly, and he didn’t want to deal with the amount of energy that it would take to get them back to an upright and locked position. "I wouldn't do that to him, anyway. No matter how I feel about him, if he'd chosen to stay far, far away from me, then I would have let him go." The words came out sounding far more bitter than Pietro would have cared to admit, but, still, they were the truth. Kitty made a small noise, nodding in an almost exaggerated manner. Whatever her next question was going to be, Pietro knew that he wasn't going to like it.

"And are you going to try and make him fall in love with you?"

And there it was. As predicted, he did not like the question. He sighed, running a hand through his hair.

"Kitty, we've been over this. I just got him back, I'm not going to run him off again." Kitty rolled her eyes.

"And what if I told you that he- that I thought that he already loved you back?" Pietro needed to sit down, he did not want to have this conversation in the slightest. Too bad sitting down might make it harder for him to run away.

"What would make you say something like that?"

"Why else would he be so quick to forgive you?"

"Uh, because Kurt's a forgiving person." Pietro snorted, trying not to glower. Kurt was remarkably forgiving; it was one of the things that Pietro liked best about him.

Loved best.

It didn't matter, because Kurt didn't feel the same way.

"Okay, smartass. I'm being serious. You need to tell him how you feel about him."

"Kitty, why are you so-" Pietro growled, "Why are you so insistent that I go and ruin things again, on the off chance that he might possibly be willing to set aside my _many_ flaws and-"

He couldn't even get the words out. Kitty surveyed him calmly, and Pietro couldn't even make himself look at Lance, terrified of what he might find there. Irritation? Probably. Pity? Almost certainly. Relief that he'd dodged Pietro's particular bullet train? Well, that might be pushing it, but Pietro wouldn't be entirely surprised if he did.

"Because I want him to be happy." Kitty said, bringing Pietro back the problem at hand. "And for reasons beyond mortal comprehension, you make him happy. And despite how I might, personally, feel about you, I guess you deserve to be happy, too. As long as you're not doing anything stupid that will break his heart." Pietro blinked, unsure if he'd just been reassured or threatened.

"That was bizarrely uplifting." He said, when it was clear that she was done. She shrugged.

"That's my specialty." She bounced up off of the couch and pressed a quick kiss to Lance's cheek. "Now, I have to go. I promised Kurt I'd help with his biology homework. And by 'help,' I do mean 'be emotionally supportive and ask Rogue for the answers during study breaks.'" She pointed a threatening finger in Pietro's direction to address him again, and he held his hands up in surrender. "Get your shit together." She hissed, before she turned on her heel and walked out of the house.

"Your girlfriend," Pietro began, trying to think of a way to say 'is utterly terrifying, and if we'd tried to recruit her instead of you, then we'd be unstoppable' without Lance thinking he was insulting her. He came up blank.

"Has a point?" Lance finished for him, and Pietro finally turned to face him, a glare prepped and ready.

He wasn't sure when Lance had started taking Kitty's side on this particular issue, but apparently, it was long enough for him to look smug about it. "If nothing else, I think she's right about Kurt having feelings for you."

"Dude," Pietro whined, "She is allowed to torture me, you are meant to have my back."

"Dude," Lance mocked, "I do have your back. This is me, having your back, making sure you don't do anything that you'll regret for the rest of your life.

"By convincing me to throw my friendship with Kurt away?" Lance sighed through his nose.

"Okay." He said, clearly psyching himself up for... something. Pietro couldn't quite tell what. "Okay, so what is going to make you believe us? It's not enough that Kitty, Kurt's best friend and confidante, is telling you that blue boy is in love with you? Fine. You know that jacket you lost?"

Pietro knew it.

Pietro was intimately aware that he'd only ever 'lost' one article of clothing, and that was because he hadn't lost it at all. He didn't know how Lance knew about it, though.

"I think I've seen Kurt wear that damn jacket more than I've seen him in his battle suit. And that's hard to do, since I don't exactly run around seeking him out." Pietro's heart skipped a beat. Or four. "I asked him about it, and he changed the subject twelve times in the span of thirty seconds. If I didn't know you, I wouldn't have even thought that was possible."

"That doesn't mean that Kurt has feelings for me. It's just warm."

"He has fur, Pietro. He doesn't need a jacket." Lance shook his head when Pietro went to continue his argument. "That's not enough, fine. What if I told you he confronted me about the two of us dating?" Pietro felt his cheeks heat, slightly.

"Wh-why would he do that?"

"He said something about wanting to make sure Kitty knew, but he didn't actually wait for me to tell him that she's known since the beginning of our relationship-" Pietro snorted, remembering well how Lance had fretted over best telling Kitty that he and Pietro had been a part of a romantic-ish relationship. "The second that I told him that we didn't have and, really, never had feelings for each other, he seemed suspiciously satisfied. He was more worried about you having feelings for me than me being open and honest in my relationship with Kitty."

"You're actually convinced he has feelings for me?" Pietro said, after trying to find a way to discredit Lance's theory. Pure disbelief was going to have to be his best weapon.

"I don't have to be convinced, Pietro. I've seen the way he looks at you. You two aren't as sneaky as you think you are. Or were. I'm guessing you aren't going to be 'sneaking around' behind everyone's backs anymore? Especially if you start dating?" Pietro tried to hide the visible response that hearing Lance's faith in Kurt's feelings for him gave him, but he couldn't. He didn't want to, either.

"If he does like me back, and that's a big if, there," Yeah, he thought, a big if that was currently filling him with a swirling warmth that he could only assume was pure, unadulterated happiness. "There's no guarantee that things will work out."

"It's worth a shot, right? Would you rather pretend for the rest of your life that there's nothing there, and risk watching him fall in love with someone else? Would you risk losing any chance of ever getting to be with him just because you didn't put your cards on the table now?"

Pietro felt an unmistakable rush of adrenaline start to course through his veins. Lance was right. Lance was secretly, in one way or another, always right.

Pietro hated to admit that, but it was true.

If he stayed friends with Kurt and didn't tell him, he'd run the risk of losing Kurt forever.

 

XX.

 

 _This isn't a date_ , Pietro reminded himself, _you might want this to be a date, but it is not a date._

Even if Kurt was as excited to be out and about with Pietro as Pietro was to be out and about with him. Even if Kurt blushed and hid a smile when Pietro sort-of-blatantly flirted with him, if only to gauge a reaction. Even if Kurt's smile was never quite as bright as when he looked at Pietro and saw him smiling back. Even if Kurt was holding his hand.

He had to remind himself, as they wandered through the mall, chattering inanely about things that had no right to be as important to Pietro as they were, that _this was not a date._

He let Kurt drag him to the food court, mentally practicing his 'hey Kurt, I'm in love with you' speech that he'd almost but not quite perfected over the last few days, but not quite ready to ruin this almost perfect afternoon.

Kurt dragged him over to one of the kiosks in the food court.

"This place has fries that I swear by, Pietro." Kurt said seriously, but his tone was belied by the smile in his eyes. "I could probably survive off of them alone."

"Heavy praise," Pietro teased, "Especially considering the disservice your words are doing to every hamburger place, ever."

"The truth is a weight on my heart," Kurt nodded, "But I will be fair, they have hamburgers, too." Pietro chuckled again.

"Of course they do, I should have known you'd never swear to eat at one place for the rest of your life if they didn't have halfway decent burgers, too."

"I am a man of simple tastes. What do you say?" Kurt turned a smile onto Pietro, and Pietro wouldn't have been able to refuse beforehand, so this was just unfair. Foul play. Pietro called shenanigans.

He bumped their shoulders together.

"I trust your judgement."

"Famous last words, Pietro Maximoff." Kurt teased.

"Meh, there are worse ways to go. Death by burgers and fries is pretty low on the list of 'horrifying ways to die' in my book."

 _If it was a date,_ he reminded himself, _it would be the perfect afternoon._

They ate quickly, and even Pietro had to admit that, for mall food, it was damn good. When they stood, Kurt reached out and took his hand again, and Pietro was half sure it was to make sure that Pietro didn't run away.

Pietro couldn’t blame him for being worried about that, but he wanted to reassure him, he wanted Kurt to be enjoying their time together as much as he was.

He opened his mouth, ready to word vomit their friendship into oblivion, when somebody stood on a chair and shouted Kurt's name. Pietro followed the voice to find-

Kitty.

Because of course.

"Katzchen!" Kurt shouted back, and his grip on Pietro's tightened slightly, as though he were afraid that the sudden appearance of his other friend would spook Pietro and make him run away again.

And that's when he realized that Kurt had no idea that Kitty was one of the people who had convinced Pietro that Kurt truly did want to be friends with him again.

Well, he supposed that that made sense, considering the other half of their conversations all involved Pietro being in love with Kurt, and Kitty's unwavering belief that Kurt felt the same.

Pietro never let his own grip waver as Kurt led him over to Kitty. This was where he could prove that he wasn't total scum and deserved the second chance that Kurt was giving him. Pietro gave her a look as they got closer. He hoped it properly conveyed his frustration, considering she was the one that kept trying to get him to just shut up and confess already, which was an oxymoron, of course, but he wasn't about to try telling her that.

Kitty was sitting with Rogue, who, surprisingly, only looked mildly uncomfortable.

Pietro had enough time to register the fact that he and Kurt were still holding hands and think, _oh, dear God, they're going to team up and kill me_ before they had reached the table where the girls sat. Pietro tried to avoid looking at what was surely a thunderous expression on Rogue's face, looking everywhere but at her while Kurt and Kitty talked about their plans for the day.

Finally, his curiosity became too much to bear, and he glanced in Rogue's direction.

To his surprise, she wasn't looking murderous or threatening, like he had anticipated, since he was currently holding hands with her _brother,_ no.

She looked smug.

She looked like she had just beaten him in some game that he didn't even know they were playing. And then she opened her mouth, and Pietro realized that there was not only a lull in the conversation, but that she wasn't smug because she had already won. She was smug because she knew something he didn't, and she was about to use it as a final nail in his proverbial coffin. He braced for impact as he waited for what she was about to say to him...

And her eyes swung to Kurt.

"So I hear that you and Amanda might be giving things another go." She said, and Pietro's heart stopped. Pietro glanced at Kurt from the corner of his eye. His eyes were wide, and Pietro knew that beneath the image inducer's false persona, his ears had just turned a bright purple.

"Wh-who told you that?" Kurt sputtered. Rogue shrugged, but her eyes were still locked on Pietro, waiting some sort of reaction, and he could see the practically evil grin hidden beneath her nonchalant guise.

"I saw the two of you together, and I heard her asking if you would be willing to give things another shot." Kitty reached across the table and smacked Kurt on the shoulder.

"Ow!"

"Sit down!" Kitty commanded, pointing at the chair directly across from her. Ruefully, Kurt let go of his hand and did as Kitty directed. "Why didn't you tell me?!" Pietro resisted the urge to ask the same question, instead choosing to follow Kurt's lead and take a seat across from the girls. As he sat he fought to school his expression into one of mild interest, even as his heart turned to lead and sunk to the vicinity of his stomach.

 _I can do this, I can listen to Kurt rave about Amanda, again_. Pietro didn't let himself think about the fact that he _hadn't_ had to deal with it last time, because they had been broken up for a while before Kurt and Pietro even began their odd companionship.

"It just happened!" Kurt protested. "I haven't even _seen_ you since she talked to me!" The girls stayed resolutely silent, disapproval radiating off of Kitty in waves, while Rogue kept grinning that smug little grin. Kitty crossed her arms, clearly not willing to take that as Kurt's final answer. Pietro, resigned to his fate, flicked Kurt on the arm.

"I think that," he hooked a thumb towards Kitty's stony expression, "is the universal expression for 'deets, bro.'" He said, using air quotes and everything. Bonus points: he'd managed to keep the dread and despair from his voice.

"There aren't any 'deets,'" Kurt glared at Pietro, and something in his mildly irritated expression shifted at whatever he saw in Pietro's carefully guarded face, and his voice softened as he continued. "I'm not getting back together with her."

"Really?" Rogue sounded entirely too pleased with herself. Her question wasn't even hardly a question, so much as it was a thinly veiled exclamation of 'I knew it.' "Why would that be?"

"Because _Rogue_ ," Kurt said, clearly trying to rile her up. She rolled her eyes, and Pietro wondered if Kurt knew that they were actually adoptive siblings, yet. He was certainly acting as if he knew it. "We didn't get along very well towards the end, if you recall." Kitty snorted, but she didn't sound amused. Pietro couldn't help but feel suddenly, viscerally, out of place.

"Oh, I remember." Kitty muttered darkly, and part of Pietro wondered just how the relationship had ended.

 _None of your business_ , Pietro reminded himself. _If he wants to tell you, then he will tell you_.

"The breakup was hard for both of us, Katzchen," Kurt sighed, as if this were an argument they'd hashed out many times before. "It was the right thing to do." Kitty kept glaring, and it occurred to Pietro that she wasn't glaring because Kurt had neglected to tell her about this development- she was glaring because she didn't want the two of them to get back together. Pietro felt a surge of gratitude that Kurt had a friend like her.

"So what did you say?" She demanded, after it became clear that Kurt wasn't going to simply volunteer any further information. It was Kurt's turn to roll his eyes.

"Guess." His body language had turned slightly defensive, and Pietro caught his eyes when Kurt glanced over to him. Kurt's eyes were unreadable, and Pietro couldn't fathom why he would look over at him _now_ of all times. Pietro was glad that at least he'd managed to keep his features guarded enough that it wasn't likely that Kurt could see him fervently hoping that Kurt had said no. When no one offered up a guess, he spoke again, his tone still slightly exasperated. "I said no, of course. I'm not really up for going through all of that again." He finally tore his eyes from Pietro's, choosing to stare at a spot just over the delighted Rogue's head. "And besides, you know I have feelings for someone else."

Pietro's head started to spin, prompting him to breathe for the first time in probably two and a half minutes. He blinked a few times, and finally looked away from Kurt, who was resolutely looking at that spot over Rogue's head, and looked like he might stay in that exact position until he turned into a statue.

As for Rogue, she was beaming at Pietro.

"Checkmate." She mouthed, and it hit him.

She had planned this.

She had planned this entire conversation, and had steered it to this exact point... for what?

Not for him, surely? He glanced over to Kitty and the situation clarified itself, ever so slightly. She, too was looking over at Rogue, clearly on the cusp of the revelation that he himself had just had. Her face was a mixture of shock and awe. Rogue flushed when she realized that Kitty was staring, and the rest of his questions disappeared as the rest of the situation clicked into place.

Rogue had done this for Kitty, and Kitty was clearly half of a second away from crushing her in the biggest bear hug she'd had since the day that her powers developed.

The silence stretched, but Pietro hardly noticed. His thoughts were a whirlwind. There was only one reason that Rogue would put them through this rigmarole.

She had to mean-

He thought back to the day, a few weeks before, when Rogue had convinced Wanda (a fact he knew now was absolutely based in the friendship he’d never understand).

Pietro tried to smother the excitement rising in his bones. He tried to kill the hope manifesting as the smile on his face, tried to ignore the racing of his heart. For the first time in months, he began to feel sure of himself. It might well be his undoing, he knew-

-But he'd known, from the moment he'd gazed down into Kurt's eyes after he sabotaged their race so that he wouldn't lose (of course, he knew that wasn't the real reason they'd gone tumbling down that hill) that Kurt would be his undoing.

If he was going to run away, he should have done it then, or he should have stayed away.

It was far, far too late for that, now.

He let his instincts guide his actions, placing a gentle hand on Kurt's shoulder and trying to subdue his smile.

"Stop teasing the man," he said, and he could hear euphoria in his voice as plain as day. Oh, well, before long the whole planet would be able to hear it, what did Rogue and Kitty and a mall full of people matter, in the long run?

"But he's in love," Kitty protested, turning back to the boys on the opposite side of the table, "it's _adorable!"_ Kurt hid his face in his hands and groaned. Kitty pointed at Pietro, just in case he hadn't gotten the message, and continued. "Even if the person he is in love with is a total dipshit."

"He is _not_!" Kurt protested, but his growl lost some of its weight, given the fact that his face was still buried in his hands. Pietro squeezed his shoulder sympathetically.

"Well, at least he feels the same way, right? I'd have to agree with Kitty if he didn't. Anyone who doesn't love you would have to be a monumental dipshit." Pietro tried to look innocent, but he feared he'd missed the mark. Kurt peeked over at him, and Pietro felt Kurt's breath hitch slightly under his hand. He hoped that he was right, he hoped that Kurt could see his feelings on his face.

Pietro didn't want to share the moment with Kitty, or Rogue, or the hundred-odd people milling in the food court. He stood, letting his hands fall, but his eyes never wavered from Kurt's face.

"Come on, you don't have to take this indignity," he announced, to Rogue and Kitty's immediate protest. Kurt hurried to follow Pietro's lead, cutting off the girls' protests with words Pietro was too excited to focus on.

He sent a shit eating grin in Rogue's direction and let himself be dragged away by Kurt.

It dawned on him that he wasn't nervous anymore. He wasn't sure how he could have possibly been nervous in the first place. Even if Rogue and Kitty were wrong about who Kurt had feelings for, Kurt deserved to know that Pietro loved him. Even if it made things strained between them, Pietro knew that Kurt wasn't the sort of person that would abandon their friendship over it.

He had nothing to lose, he decided, as Kurt lead him through the mall. And, well, he had promised an explanation.

"Hey, Kurt," He began, aiming for sounding nonchalant.

"Yeah?" Kurt squeaked, still clearly embarrassed by the shenanigans in the food court, but underneath that he sounded almost... afraid. Pietro reached out and wrapped his fingers around Kurt's hand, trying to soothe him in whatever way he could.

"You know how I almost completely ruined our friendship?" Kurt turned decidedly wary eyes onto him. "I wasn't hiding our friendship because I was _at all_ ashamed of you," those words had haunted Pietro, in his waking moments as well as when he was asleep. He couldn't believe that he'd let a day go by without telling Kurt how much he meant to him, especially with those words as background noise for his everyday tasks. Wanda had helped, had assured him that Kurt didn't think that, but that didn't mean that Pietro forgot about it.

"Pietro, you don't have to do this," Kurt said quietly. "I told you, I forgive you, explanation or no explanation."

"You did, yeah. But you deserve to know why I acted like such an ass, and it also kind of ties into what I'm planning to say next." He squeezed Kurt's hand and fought off the sudden wave of nervousness that came crashing back down at Kurt's words. He really should have just barreled on, utilizing the nerve-free atmosphere he'd been occupying only moments before. "The problem was that, once my friends saw me interact with you, they'd know-" Pietro took a deep, shuddering breath, "-they'd know, just from looking at me, that I was in love with you." Pietro found himself facing Kurt faster than he would have thought his friend capable of. His shoulder ached slightly from where Kurt had pulled his arm to swing Pietro around, and he blinked, a little stunned, before focusing his eyes on Kurt's face.

Kurt was gazing at him desperately, searching for some sign of mockery or insincerity in his eyes. Pietro smiled softly at him, not caring that they were _almost_ causing a scene in the middle of the mall. As if realizing the same thing a moment after the thought crossed Pietro's mind, Kurt spun and speed walked them through the mall, half-dragging Pietro behind him. The moment that he pulled Pietro into a small alcove near a bathroom, he teleported.

Pietro had seen it coming, this time, unlike many of the times in the past, so he was able to close his eyes before they entered Kurt's pocket dimension. He felt heat wash over his face, and kept his eyes screwed tightly shut. The light in Kurt's hellish dimension had nearly blinded him on more than one occasion, when going from an area with little light to wherever the space Kurt utilized was. It wasn't that the light was bright, it was that the light was _hot_ and that the light was _everywhere_ , from the sky to the lava below, to the crevices in the rock faces that they traveled through.

The feeling of abrupt forward movement stopped suddenly, and Pietro felt his feet, once again, on solid ground.

They were in a clearing, up on the cliff overlooking Xavier's mansion he realized upon opening his eyes and looking around, and there wasn't another soul in sight. Kurt switched off his image inducer, and Pietro relaxed at the familiar sight of Kurt in front of him, beautiful and blue.

Kurt opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again. Pietro waited to see if he was going to speak or not for another few moments before he continued. He shook off the vertigo that teleportation gave him (he was _almost_ used to it) and tried to gather his thoughts.

"I, uh, I don't care about that, anymore." Kurt's face fell at his words, and if Pietro had been at all uncertain that this was the _only_ choice that he could make, if he'd been at all worried that Kurt wouldn't return his feelings after the food court debacle, well they would have evaporated at the sight of the bright, hopeful light in Kurt's eyes disappearing. He hurried to continue, pulling Kurt's chin up so that Kurt was looking at him again. "I don't care because I was afraid of losing you, if you found out. I know I should have given you more credit, but I was so scared that my feelings would ruin things between us. I was so sure that you would never feel the same way that I went and ruined things on my own. And then everyone found about my feelings for you _anyway_ , and the only person who didn't know was you. Looking back, you were the first person I should have told." Kurt's mouth was hanging open slightly, but the light was back in his eyes. Pietro would do anything to make it stay that way. "Kurt, I'm-"

"I'm in love with you!" Kurt blurted, looking as though he couldn't have held the declaration in for a moment longer.  Pietro huffed a laugh, fully aware that his current facial expression was falling somewhere within the realm of 'besotted.'

"You took the words right out of my mouth." He teased, itching to lean forward and kiss the small embarrassed smile on Kurt's lips.

"No, I mean, I'm in love with you. You were the one that Kitty and Rogue kept teasing me about. You're the person I have feelings for."

And Pietro, in the face of the happiness that was currently threatening to overwhelm him, couldn't stop himself from being just a little bit of an asshole, even though Kurt was almost close enough to kiss.

"Well, that's lucky. I was worried for a second there-" Kurt cut him off, curling his tail around Pietro's waist and pulling him in close. He hesitated, and Pietro was tempted to keep talking, but, well, Kurt _was_ close enough to kiss, now. And if you asked Pietro, he was doing himself a great disservice by depriving the two of them of this opportunity. He leaned forward to peck a kiss to Kurt's lips but found himself incapable of letting the kiss remain the teasing peck he'd planned. He slotted their lips together, practically melting the second that Kurt started to kiss him back.

The pair were smiling too widely for the kiss to be anything resembling "good," but Pietro didn't care. It was yards better than the stolen kiss down at the beach, miles better than what Pietro had let himself dream up in more vulnerable daydreams. It was nothing short of perfect.

Kurt giggled and Pietro had to pull away to drink in the happiness on Kurt's face.

"I love you," he said, because he could. Kurt buried his face in Pietro's shoulder, but Pietro still heard the murmured response whispered into his skin.

They stood like that for a length of time that Pietro didn't care to quantify. It could have been forever, and Pietro would have stayed just as happy. It didn't matter. They were together, they were finally on the same page. They _got to be together._ Despite everything that had happened, every instinct that Pietro had that hissed at him and told him Kurt deserved better. It didn't matter, because Kurt loved him back. Kurt pulled away, and mixed with some of the happiness that Pietro was sure was reflected in his own face, was a glint of mischief that Pietro adored.

"Was this a date?" He asked, "Because I would have thought you went all out for first dates." Pietro's heart soared at the question.

"This was absolutely a date." He confirmed, "But that's a common misconception, It’s the second date that you have to go all out on." Kurt hid another giggle in the crook of Pietro's neck.

This was a date. The first of many.

The first of a lifetime's worth, if Pietro had any say.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I've worked on this thing for nine months, guys. I can literally call this thing my baby.  
> Please let me know what you think of it, or come and yell at me for all of my headcanons/what I put these kids through/whether or not you think I wrapped everything up as nicely as I thought I did over on tumblr @scarletwix!  
> (I very easily could have thought about scenes so much that I thought I added them when I really... didn't...)


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